UNISAME SENDS SOS TO PM IMRAN KHAN

The business community being badly affected seeks immediate solutions through friendly, superior and bold policies which envisage industrialization and which goes all out to facilitate an investor from Pakistan or overseas.
The Union of Small and Medium Enterprises ( UNISAME) has invited the attention of
the prime minister (PM) Imran Khan to the urgent need to stimulate the economy by facilitating the business community and encouraging them to play an important role in reviving the economy.
President UNISAME Zulfikar Thaver urged the PM to introduce friendly policies of
trade, industry, SME, taxation and provide incentives. High impact policies are required for revival of economy. He urged the PM to direct the cabinet to give top priority to the economy and its revival on war footings.
Thaver said the government needs to work strategically on the primary, secondary,
tertiary and mining sectors. It is pertinent to note the requirements of the textile, rice, engineering, commodities,agribusiness and specifically the SME sector.
The requirements of a good Industrial Policy is that the industrialist should feel comfortable and the existing units remain feasible and sufficient incentives are provided to new comers and the sick units are given new life under a restructuring programme. The units have to be competitive and the cost of production needs to be reduced.
The supply of raw material ensured, the element of duties, taxes, mark ups needs to be revised specifically industry wise to accommodate the ones which are facing tough competition. Likewise the business community needs friendly trade, taxation and SME policies.UNISAME experts have expressed concern over the slow and going to do habit of policy makers and invited their attention that time is the essence and with the fast depreciation of the rupee, the inflation and the increase in mark up the situation is alarming.
Special Economic Zones (SEZ) need to be established and entrepreneurs encouraged to set up industries for items which are imported and can be manufactured in Pakistan. The Pakistan Council of Scientific & Industrial Research has a long list of import substitutes and this can be commercially exploited. The Government can set up industries and give them to entrepreneurs on long term repayment schemes with low markup to give industrialization a jump start. The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) and the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) must jointly work on value addition programme. In fact a value addition cell is the need of the hour.
The WTO agreement leaves us no choice but to focus on items where we are better placed by virtue of natural or traditional factors or cheap labour and we have to promote such industries and modernize them .
It is our firm belief that the Large Scale Enterprises must be vigourously encouraged
because the Small & Medium Enterprises are indirectly promoted and every effort must be made to arrange for collaborations in different areas with leading industries of the world to enable our large sector to set up industries in engineering, construction, chemicals, synthetic yarns, electronics and heavy mechanical complexes.
Needless to say that the industries are subjected to answer and adhere to various
Government agencies who are demanding various levies and charges and this needs to
be minimized to reduce unnecessary paper work and a negative feeling of distrust and
over checking. The much talked about one window operation needs to be implemented in letter and spirit.
The SMEs have requested the Government to set up SME PROMOTION BUREAU to
promote, encourage, facilitate, support and educate SMEs who need motivation and this
can be done by a Bureau managed by the private sector or in private public partnership to launch a programme for the direct uplift of the sector. Also urgently required is a Small Medium Enterprises Liaison Committee (SME-LC) for protection of SME units in areas where feudal lords are dominating, demanding and collecting extortion.

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