Chartered Accountant Harsha Gunasena
In addition to the social thinking of a country, the attitudes of the business community also play a major role in boosting a country’s economy. A business is extremely competitive. It has to compete with similar businesses to get customer dates. Even in the absence of competition, it is essential by human nature to give the customer, or the recipient of their goods or services, something superior in quality.
Some businesses compete with the customer. They wonder how to get the most profit from the customer. This is a very short-lived action. The world depends on giving and receiving. The public servant gives his services to the people and receives salaries from the government. The entrepreneur receives money for goods or services. The doctor sometimes plays the role of a public servant and sometimes a businessman. If what the giver values more than what the giver feels than what the giver takes, it will lead to the longevity of the giver.
The primary purpose of any business is to survive. Not cheap. Survival requires profits, and in some cases short-term profits have to be made to sustain losses. Survival cannot be sustained by long-term losses. There are also businesses that can do that. Some state enterprises in Sri Lanka are an example of this. They have become unprofitable businesses due to inefficient management, job opportunities for the henchmen of political authorities and being a vehicle for the government to provide some relief to the people. These are mainly maintained in this manner due to the prevailing and ignorant ideologies in the country.
A business needs a steady customer base to survive. Facilitating these customers, or giving them what they ask for better than they expected, increases sales or turnover. Accordingly, trade turnover is the result of meeting the needs of consumers. At the same time, the expenditure on the business should be kept under control. The result is profit. Attempting to make ill-gotten gains in the short term can jeopardize the very existence of the business. Therefore, the business exists as a result of a number of causal relationships.
Today, marketing has become a widespread subject. In this case it is recommended that the consumer be treated as a king. But there are times when in practical situations the king has to be told to be a little more patient. In Sri Lanka, there are many instances where this king is considered a scoundrel. The customers of public servants are the public. Some time ago, the word ‘your obedient servant’ appeared above the signatures of letters written to the public by government officials. Now there is no such application in writing or in action. The inefficiency of government officials is widespread. But some officials in Sri Lanka are torturing the people by claiming some authority. They use the current Kovid situation as a light carrier for the suffering of the people.
If the doctor is considered to be running a business (many of them run the business) the patient is his or her client. Some doctors treat this customer as a scoundrel, not a king. The doctors on the channel do not arrive on time and the delay is not minutes but hours. The doctor does not give detailed answers to the patient’s questions and he / she issues orders to the patient. In some cases, they take bribes from drug dealers and prescribe branded over-the-counter drugs while their customers have the lowest-priced drugs. Physicians also prescribe such treatments for long-term treatable diseases such as diabetes. This whole process is a nasty process. These have no existence. There are two actions that a government should take against these conditions. One is regulation. The other is to open up the local market to qualified foreign doctors.
There is another way to do this. The business of a doctor who treats his client or patient like a king will grow day by day. By making this change, they will be able to outperform themselves and other competing physicians. And they will be able to make a difference in the whole field. For example, some time ago, the government tried to install meters on three-wheelers, but was unable to do so due to protests by three-wheeler drivers. Later one company introduced metered tricycles to the market. Then came consumer demand for metered three-wheelers. Accordingly, other drivers also installed meters in their three-wheelers. Supply should be commensurate with the demand. What the government could not do, the market did.
There are many instances where private businesses neglect their customers. This is a big obstacle to business development. Protecting existing customers is more important than finding new customers. They must be supplied with good quality goods. Many businesses in Sri Lanka reduce the quality of their products as the cost of their products increases. When the cost of production goes up, all you have to do is find ways and means to finish your product or service at a lower cost. Failure to do so will result in an increase in the selling price of the goods. Competitive goods in the market can be difficult to sell if the price is lower than the price of their product. However, reducing the quality of goods is a deception of the consumer and should not be done. The merchant who deceives the consumer has no existence.
In the book An Historical Relations of Ceylon, written by Robert Knox in 1681, he says of the Sinhalese: “They are very cunning and cannot trust any statement,” he said. They can easily deceive anyone who does not know their character and character by the pleasant and polite nature of their speech. They have no responsibility, conscience, shame or shame for lying and letting others know about it. That is normal. ”
In trading it is by no means a normal thing. Such an action zone would put the very existence of its business in serious crisis. It can be said that there is a shadow of the above statement of Robert Knox in the general consciousness of those who are engaged in manufacturing and trade in this country. Newcomers to the export trade in particular need to be aware of this fact.
The cinnamon and coconut coir industries exported from Sri Lanka are largely run as small scale industries in the provinces where they are grown. Those involved in those businesses have no understanding of their quality. Sri Lanka is one of the leading suppliers of cinnamon to the world. Cinnamon is in great demand in the world. But the cinnamon production process is very backward. In the manufacturing process, manufacturers, especially workers, incorporate our material into the finished product for ease and short-term profitability. Due to the shortage of workers in production, they have authority over the production process. Their rent is also very high. Due to the limited world supply of this cinnamon, the price of Sri Lankan cinnamon is relatively high. However, if the quality of the products can be improved, a much higher price can be obtained for local cinnamon. This is not because the lower strata of the industry do not have an understanding of the quality of the goods and the preferences of the consumer. The situation in the coir industry is similar. They produce inferior quality coir and often have a tendency to mix water and send it to factories for weight gain.
We discussed local doctors, government officials, three-wheeler owners and those involved in the cinnamon and coir industry. They represent a top-down cross-section of society. They all have a great common factor. That is, less concern for their customers. My observation is that this is our national weakness. We must abandon the mentality put forward by Robert Knox. If this national weakness is not overcome, it will be difficult to boost the country’s economy, no matter how much government policy is formulated.