Extreme events have catastrophic direct and indirect effects on corporate operations and continuity. These disastrous events have had a substantial influence on Sri Lanka's Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) in recent years. Because they are resource constrained and less robust, the micro and small business sectors might be deemed particularly susceptible to elements of the Sri Lankan economy that were severely damaged by recurrent natural and man-made interruptions.
Particularly, the tourism sector of Sri Lanka saw a down spiral since the Easter Sunday attacks of 2019, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic which has now seen four virulent waves and several other variants too. The implications of these interruptions on the micro businesses that depend on the larger tourism industry has suffered incorrigible losses in terms of livelihood, assets and insurmountable financial constraints.
The “Business Resilience Handbook for MSMEs” is designed to provide MSMEs to adapt and assimilate to practice business resilience and continuity amidst any interruption in a sustainable manner. This guide is the base for your business resiliency plan. Since every business faces different threats, your plan will be different from the plans of other businesses. To maximize the utility of this booklet, it is important that throughout the process you honestly consider where your business currently stands in its various emergency preparation efforts and where it is vulnerable in these efforts.
The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the United Nations, including the Connecting Business initiative (CBi), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).