Union Bank expands support to women entrepreneurs

Over 25 years, Union Bank has provided its services to support and develop small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across Sri Lanka.  
In addition to supporting the development and growth of SME businesses in diverse sectors, the bank takes pride in supporting female entrepreneurship and has been instrumental in continuously providing and enhancing its services towards building women-led businesses and women entrepreneurs.  

Amongst its financial solutions to this sector, the bank through its SME credit line focuses and provides grants for women entrepreneurs.  Through this credit line, women entrepreneurs are guaranteed a 10 percent grant with selected sectors receiving up to 25 percent of the loan value. 

Union Bank Chief Manager Development Financing and Business Revival/Rehabilitation Janaka Edirisinghe said, “Union Bank is proud to support and empower women entrepreneurship. The bank has provided several support initiatives, including funding, advisory services and skill development. We are happy to see over 60 percent participation from women entrepreneurs in workshops conducted for SMEs and their interest in the bank’s SME credit line. In addition to grants, the bank’s support initiatives provide access to women entrepreneurs opportunities to enhance their knowledge and skills development and know-how on business sustainability.  This sector faces numerous challenges on financial reliability, due to the accessibility to funding. The bank continues to provide funding to this sector and has distributed significant amounts of funding in the past year and plans are underway to launch several other support initiatives as well to encourage women entrepreneurship.

SMEs are considered as the backbone of the country’s economy and are a diverse sector that massively supports Sri Lanka’s socioeconomic development. The sector largely contributes to the country’s GDP and acts as the main employment provider.