Industry and Commerce Minister Rishad Bathiudeen yesterday dismissed rumours about a possible privatization of Lanka Sathosa chain to a diversified conglomerate in the country.
Rishad clarified while addressing the award night of Lanka Sathosa-Hemas joint promotion campaign called ‘Sathosata Enna Car Eken Yanna’, a marketing initiative partnered by Lanka Sathosa, which has the largest state-owned retail network. Currently 377 branches are in operation and the minister expects to increase the number to 500 by end of this year.
A KPMG study had shown that Lanka Sathosa’s distribution logistics, among other issues, to be a bottleneck hampering the progress of the institution. Hence, Lanka Sathosa recently outsourced its distribution logistics to Hemas group.
“We called open tenders and one of the bidders, Hemas, won it having fulfilled the criteria.
Thereafter I did not by myself decide to award the tender to Hemas, but I asked permission from the Cabinet of Ministers to go-ahead to outsource distribution logistics to Hemas.
I even removed Lanka Sathosa’s personnel recruitment procedure from it and handed it over to the consultancy firm KPMG, who recruited qualified personnel to run it. We did not influence KPMG’s recruitments,” said Bathiudeen.
