Headless decision kills local helmet industry

Just imagine meeting with an accident on your bike and your helmet not performing what it has promised? Traversing on a motorbike like the celebrities do on television will no doubt give you thrills, but ignoring the safety factors such as riding with a low standard helmet is sure to imprint lifetime regrets.

This is exactly what Upali Perera, Managing Director of Upali Perera and Company Ltd, the only local firm to get a Sri Lanka Standards (SLS) certification for manufacturing motorcycle helmets, wants to highlight while trying desperately to raise his head in a helmet industry which is not conducive to local manufacturers like him.

This is mainly due to the reduction of import duty on helmets, which don’t have proper quality standards. “The import duty on helmets was reduced to six percent in the 2006 budget from 28 percent.

This year, we wrote to the Treasury asking for a compromise on the duty, but the budget did not provide any relief,” said Perera, adding that the imports are literally ‘plastic heads’, without proper quality standards. He reasoned that the move to reduce duty on the Chinese imports could not be comprehended in terms of the budget being encouraging to local industries, which has also got industry sources asking many questions. “This is clearly a headless decision.

The important question is why the authorities are silent despite repeated reasoning by local manufacturers requesting them to increase the duty structure of the low standard Chinese imports,” an industry source pointed out.

Perera, whose factory is on par with any international factory, is planning to expand to India but is concerned about the reduction of taxes on low quality Chinese imports and fears a decrease in revenue next year. He said the company is in talks with an Indian buyer to supply helmets, which may materialise next year. “However we need to have a firm footing in Sri Lanka before expanding and we need the government to back us,” he added.

He has already counted a 25 percent drop in sales this year. “We also had to reduce the production accordingly,” Perera said.
Presently Upali Perera and Company located at Kelaniya provides employment for 200 people. “The low quality imports have not gone out of Colombo. They only distribute in Colombo, but we are an islandwide supplier. But if they also go into the regions, we will have a real problem,” he added.

He said that the factory is fully equipped with all the safety standards and the employees follow the ‘5 Ss’ principle, the Japanese emphasis on training and discipline for a clean, safe, and orderly workplace. “It has created a new culture which embraces change and ensures that improvement will be sustained,” Perera said, adding that this system is the fundamental basis for producing high quality products and services, with little or no waste, while maintaining high levels of productivity.