SME FRIENDLY POLICIES NEEDED TO ENABLE SECTOR MEET THE CHALLENGES

The Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (UNISAME) urged the government to provide environment, energy and encouragement to the sector to enable it to meet the economic challenges of devaluation of rupee, hyper inflation and poor infrastructure.

President UNISAME Zulfikar Thaver speaking on a local business television channel told the viewers that the entrepreneurs need SME friendly policies of import and export, industrial policy, taxation and investment policies and aligning the policies for better implementation. The import policy must encourage import of import substitution manufacturing units, export policy must encourage export of value added goods, industrial policy must encourage and facilitate manufacturing of innovative items and taxation policy to give incentives and tax holidays and benefits to new industries in under developed areas.

He said the government must encourage the import of raw materials, machinery, technology, alternate energy devices and farm equipments and allow imports on zero duties.

He stressed on implementation of SME policy which highlights the importance of agro based industries, livestock, poultry, fish farming and value addition of agri produce namely fruits, flowers, vegetables and herbs.

Thaver urged upon the government to without loss of time give priority to the SME sector and the housing industry and facilitate it with finance, credit insurance, leasing and collateral management inclusive of warehousing, logistics and supply chain support.

Thaver also a member of the board of directors of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) pin pointed the need for the SME technical institute, chamber of commerce and industry for the SMEs, specific SME bank and SME venture capital fund.

He complimented SMEDA for the feasibility for the prime minister’s (PM) Youth Programme and expressed confidence for success of the self employment projects.

An SME needs to keep improving bench mark for product or services image building and branding for domestic and international markets.
The Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) need to take positive steps to promote the wares of the SMEs in international markets by establishing an SME export house for global marketing for SMEs.

Since SMEDA was conceived by PM Nawaz Sharif and his government firmly believes in the potentiality of the sector the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) government must not lose precious time and invigorate the sector with the required facilities and promote it on fast track basis to enable it to meet the challenges he concluded.

Posted in: Press Releases