8th Pakistan SME FORUM 2014 TO BE HELD ON 19th AUGUST

The small to medium sized entrepreneurs (SMEs) are the biggest stakeholders in Pakistan’s economy and need the best facilities of environment, finance, infrastructure, regular supply of energy amd uninterrupted supply of raw material advised the Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (UNISAME) in a message to the convener of the 8th Pakistan SME Forum 2014 to be held on 19th August at a local hotel under the banner “Bringing SMEs to the forefront of National Priorities “.

President Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (UNISAME) Zulfikar Thaver thanked Menin Rodrigues chairman of Shamrock Conferences for arranging an SME Forum 2014 of all stakeholders from all over the country and pinpointed to him that the elected popular government of PML -N is dedicated, SME friendly and aware of the fact that the SME sector is the majority sector and plays the key role in employment generation.

He said the finance minister (FM) Ishaq Dar has also invited the business community to submit their suggestions for fine tuning of the trade, industrial and financial policies and the planning ministry under the leadership of Professor Ahsan Iqbal is revisiting the SME policy, The federal commerce minister Khurrram Dastagir is equally keen to promote the sector. He said we now have good leadership and hope to achieve a lot for the sector with close integration of the 3 important ministries.

He stated that UNISAME has urged the FM to facilitate the sector by arranging leasing of premises, machinery, technology, raw material and bills on soft terms of easy repayment on installments.

The union has also demanded facilities like the establishment of protection squads in industrial areas.The duty free imports of gasification systems for power generation and repayment on hire purchase.The early establishment of Exim bank for financing import and export under collateral management. The establishment of SME export houses, SME credit insurance, SME fund bank and SME leasing companies.
The union urged the FM to promote the housing industry on priority basis and encourage house finance products to enable people to build their own houses as it will develop several related industries in the sector.

Thaver said we are confident the 8th Pakistan SME Forum 2014 will play an important role in highlighting the issues of the sector and impress upon the policy makers to make the environment conducive and make efforts to reduce the cost of doing business.

Posted in: Press Releases