A new circular has been issued by the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development to provide relief to micro, small and self-employed businesses affected by the emergency situation caused by Cyclone Ditwah. The circular has been issued in line with Circular No. 08\/2025, which was introduced to restore disrupted livelihoods following the disaster.<\/p>\n
The Government programme to empower communities affected by the disaster was introduced through Budget Circular No. 08\/2025 dated December 5, 2025. Expanding this relief framework further and ensuring more effective and efficient delivery of assistance, additional circulars No. 08\/2025(i) dated December 20, 2025 and No. 08\/2025(iii) dated January 22, 2026 have been issued.<\/p>\n
The social empowerment programme under the newly issued circular is structured as follows.<\/p>\n
Assistance for affected individual, small and micro businesses<\/p>\n
A one-time grant to restore businesses damaged by the disaster to a condition suitable for reopening.<\/p>\n
LKR 200,000 for individual, small and micro-businesses registered with the Ministry of Industry.<\/p>\n
LKR 200,000 for individual, small and micro-businesses registered with the Divisional Secretariat as a business entity.<\/p>\n
LKR 50,000 for unregistered home-based businesses operated from a permanent structure.<\/p>\n
LKR 50,000 per unit for unregistered production industries, including greenhouses.<\/p>\n
LKR 25,000 for temporary business setups, including mobile and street hawking.<\/p>\n
A grant will be provided to owners of the commercial buildings affected by the disaster to restore their business premises to operational condition.<\/p>\n
A grant of Rs. 500,000\/- will be provided to each business building owner who voluntarily opts to receive assistance without a damage assessment.<\/p>\n
A grant of up to Rs. 5,000,000\/- will be provided to each business building owner who opts to receive assistance after a damage assessment, based on the assessed value of the building.<\/p>\n
In addition to the above grants, the following loan facilities have also been provided.<\/p>\n
In addition to these grants, the Treasury has introduced a new credit scheme to provide loans for business owners whose enterprises were affected by the disaster, enabling them to restart their operations and meet essential requirements.<\/p>\n
Accordingly:<\/p>\n
Facilities have been provided for affected businesses to obtain loans ranging from Rs. 250,000 to Rs. 25,000,000 through the banking system at an interest rate of 3%, with a 6-month grace period and repayment over 3 years to restart their operations.<\/p>\n
As part of the investment loans for business reconstruction, entrepreneurs whose businesses were damaged can access bank loans of up to Rs. 25 million at an interest rate of 5%, with a 12-month grace period and repayment over 10 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new circular has been issued by the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development to provide relief…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[274],"tags":[18,135,19,17,462],"class_list":{"0":"post-308643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-medication"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115974745868784354","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}