ASSESSING EXPORT READINESS OF THE SMES IN AGRICULTURE SECTOR IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

This study was conducted with the aim of assessing the export readiness of agriculture-sector SMEs in Sri Lanka by constructing a systematic Export Readiness Index (ERI) to assist Sri Lanka Export Development Board (EDB) in taking fact-based decisions. The SMEs in the agriculture-sector of Sri Lanka provide the greatest contribution to the export revenues and development of the rural sector, but a large proportion of the export business of agriculture-sector SMEs is difficult to achieve and maintain internationally due to poor export readiness, lack of knowledge and non-existence of a well-established mechanism for testing of export readiness. The empirical evidence of the research was obtained through a structured questionnaire survey based on structured interviews which were taken from 90 purposively selected agriculture sector SME exporters and secondary data from EDB data base. The data was analyzed with the help of descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Spearman's correlation analysis with SPSS version 16 and Microsoft excel. The analysis shows that readiness.

Keywords

Export Readiness, Export Readiness Index (ERI), Agricultural SMEs, Export Development Board (EDB), Sri Lanka