How does COVID-19 Influence the Micro Small and Medium Enterprise Sector in Sri Lanka?

Micro Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) sector is considered to be the backbone of an economy where a strong MSME sector contributes towards the economic stability and well-being of a country. More importantly, technology plays a critical role in the development of business performance as technological know-how is vital for business to survive amidst COVID-19 outbreak. Hence, it encourage the entrepreneurs to improve their awareness of technology and thereby to use new technology to improve the business performance. Further, it has been identified that entrepreneurial competencies are important to ensure higher business performance where most successful entrepreneurs utilize their competencies to improve business performance. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the changes that have taken place in relation technological literacy, entrepreneurial competency, and business performance amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Sri Lanka. The study is a quantitative, cross-sectional study and the data was collected from 48 entrepreneurs of micro and small enterprises. The result of the study reveal that signicant change have taken place through a structured questionnaire in relation technological literacy, business performance, and entrepreneurial competency amidst COVID-19. The level of commitment of the entrepreneurs found to have improved significantly after the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there has been a learn improvet in the technological literacy among micro and small entrepreneurs. Therefore, the policy makers need to focus on developing suitable strategies to improve the technological know-how by the micro and small entrepreneurs.