Catalog

During the March 2000 Country Programming Mission, a yearly exercise during which ADB and the Government of Sri Lanka agree on a program of loans and technical assistance for the coming 3 years, the Government requested ADB to provide advisory assistance for promoting and making the agreement operational.

A series of participatory consultations—financed through the regional technical assistance grant on participation—were conceptualized, and ADB approved a grant of $15,000 for this activity in September 2000.

When the preparatory work began in earnest in early 2001, we found it necessary to review our objectives and activities. The major change was that the idea of ADB providing technical assistance to support trade promotion had been subsumed into a larger technical assistance grant, Enabling Small and Medium Enterprise - SME Growth.

As a result, consultations with the stakeholders on the Indo-Lankan Free Trade Agreement were designed to focus more directly on the SME sector and on the issues that affected it. We contracted the Centre for Poverty Analysis, a Sri Lankan research institute, to do the work.

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Participation as a Process

We took a novel approach and steered away from the usual formal workshop or seminar during which issues are discussed. Rather, we felt participation should be viewed as part of the process leading to a larger dialogue among stakeholders.

We held a series of consultations with individual groups of stakeholders from the same broad background, such as the private sector. This process was built into a larger dialogue where all the stakeholders could meet.

The advantage of this approach is that it allows members of the same group to discuss and resolve their views among themselves prior to moving into a dialogue with other groups. For example, members of the private sector group met to discuss issues prior to gathering with government representatives in the larger dialogue.

This helped the members of each group work out their differences and take a common stand on key issues when they met with others at the dialogue workshop. We hoped this would ultimately lead to a more fruitful and constructive interchange.

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Small Groups Encourage Discussion

Our first task was to identify the key stakeholders. We decided that four groups should be consulted:

• the private sector - exporters, importers, manufacturers, and chambers of commerce
• government ministries and departments
• the academic and research community
labor unions and nongovernment organizations

A series of preparatory meetings was arranged with each stakeholder group, during which we tried to identify their concerns and suggested resolutions and actions. More specifically, our objectives were to use the preparatory meetings to review the experiences of the various stakeholders with the FTA and to identify the constraints, opportunities, and implementation problems.

Linked to these issues were other questions: what arrangements could—or should—be made to ensure smooth FTA implementation, and which issues should be included in ADB’s technical assistance.

Each preparatory meeting took half a day and resulted in our gaining perspective on the experiences group members had encountered and on the suggested roles and tasks for each stakeholder group. It was interesting to see how different groups perceived the FTA.

Based on their firsthand experience, the academic and research community identified six priority areas:

• larger market access
• opportunities for diversification
• potential foreign direct investment
• the market position of SMEs
• a lack of information on FTA
institutional arrangements

By contrast, government representatives felt that export and investment promotion, inadequate market strategies, and a general lack of awareness of the FTA were priority areas. When private sector representatives met, they viewed market access, joint venture opportunities, implementation problems, tariff uncertainties, and inadequate institutional arrangements as important priorities.

Clearly, the different groups perceived the issues from a variety of perspectives. The challenge we now faced was how to build consensus.

To gain additional insights into the process, all participants in the preparatory meetings were asked to fill out an anonymous short questionnaire on the FTA so that participants’ individual views could be more honestly assessed.

We learned a lot: we met with the stakeholders, they told us what they thought was positive and what was negative about the FTA, and they ranked their priorities. It was now time to bring the groups together.

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Dialogue for Unity

Most would agree that while it is relatively easy for any group to identify a problem, coming to a mutually satisfactory agreement on how to solve it is much more of a challenge.

Once we had held preparatory meetings and agreed on what the problems were, our next task was to build consensus on how to resolve the outstanding issues that the groups had raised. This was the central theme of the dialogue workshop held on 27 June 2001.

Twenty-four participants confirmed their attendance, with nearly all actively participating in the entire program, making it a lively and dynamic day.

In a participation exercise, it is always important to get the discussion going early and to keep speeches and introductory remarks short. To warm up the participants, we presented views—expressed by them during the preparatory meetings—on the factors that would contribute to a successful outcome to the dialogue workshop.

The opinions ranged from the need to have proper communications between the participants to the observation that problems and strategies should be identified and groups must take responsibility for following up. A second warm-up exercise, a presentation of the results of the anonymous questionnaire given out on the FTA, dramatically highlighted—in an occasionally amusing way—how many differences existed between the main groups of stakeholders.

To encourage discussion, we thought we should break into smaller groups. We presented tasks for each group as a basis for debate. The list not only identified the tasks for each group as they themselves had articulated, but also those that were suggested by the Government and by the academic and research community. It was rather interesting to see the various perceptions that emerged.

Three small groups were created. One focused on the implementation and institutional arrangements, a second on awareness creation and trade/investment promotion, and a third on SMEs in Sri Lanka. We ensured that each group contained representatives of different stakeholder groups to maximize the exchanges. The groups met in the morning and continued after lunch. In the late afternoon, the groups presented their findings.

It was terrific to see the constructive ideas and practical suggestions that came out of the small group sessions. From the duty structure, to specific activities to promote Sri Lankan trade and investment in India, to organizing awareness campaigns for SMEs, the ideas were all practical and answered specific needs. Most importantly, we can now take steps to ensure that this input is reflected in ADB’s technical assistance.

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Wrapping Up

Like many meetings, the day ended with comments from the participants. Many of them remarked on how positive the entire exercise had been, and that they would like to meet again. Some participants noted that the same group could play a major role in the upcoming discussions on the Sri Lanka-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement.

Overall, the process can perhaps be most succinctly encapsulated in the remark made by one of the stakeholders: “Most problems we were aware of have been identified. Now, solutions are needed.” We couldn’t agree more.

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Learn more about participatory development in Asia and the Pacific

Read the news release - Strengthening Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in Sri Lanka