UNISAME WELCOMES SMEDA’S STEPS TO STRENGTHEN DATA BASE, REGISTER & OFFER MEMBERSHIP TO SMEs

The Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (UNISAME) has welcomed the agenda of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) to register the SMEs and also strengthen the data base through deploying ICT and offering membership to entrepreneurs. This will indeed be a very positive step and of much benefit to the stakeholders.

President UNISAME Zulfikar Thaver said this will enable the SME promotion and development stakeholders to assess the needs of the sector and facilitate them accordingly. He said as chairman of the Capacity Building Working Group (CBWG) of the Technical Committee (TC) of the National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) he had recommended a survey and database of SMEs occupation wise and location wise.

Muhammad Alamgir Chaudhry General Manager (GM) SMEDA invited Zulfikar Thaver president UNISAME and Chairman CBWG to a focus group meeting on 18th August 2016 at SMEDA head office Lahore to discuss mechanisms for strengthening existing SME database and simultaneously exploring the possibility of registering SMEs with SMEDA. The focus group will also provide an opportunity to discuss and design incentives for attracting SMEs towards becoming members of SMEDA.

Thaver said we are indeed grateful to SMEDA for finally taking the initiative as this was our demand since many years and we have time and again stressed the need for determining the strength of the sector and knowing their whereabouts and line of trade to facilitate them according to their requirements.

He said the requirements of each industry is different and it is very important to study and examine the requirements of each specific industry and recommend measures for their growth.
After knowing how many SMEs are engaged in textiles, rice, engineering, sports, surgical, cutlery food stuffs and agri based industries it will be in a position to plan for their uplift on scientific lines. Besides it will also enable SMEDA to know those SMEs who are into trading and services.
UNISAME has recommended that SMEDA needs to work from grass root level and stressed the need to promote the primary sector which is the source of raw material and as a second step to promote value addition units in the secondary sector.

He expressed satisfaction that the action plan of the NFIS with dateline is being implemented and said UNISAME is confident that the sector will be facilitated under the strategy of financial inclusion of World Bank, Ministry of Finance and the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).

The NFIS action plan has placed responsibilities on SMEDA and UNISAME to work jointly for capacity building of institutions, trade associations and the SMEs to achieve the maximum progress in modernization.

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