March 29, 2002	Friday	Muharram 14, 1423

KARACHI, March 28: The Small and Medium Enterprise Development Authority (Smeda) is presently working on a plan which would suggest to the government how to remove regulatory retardants in the way of promoting SMEs.

This was stated by Smeda’s chief operating officer (COO) Asir Manzur at a workshop jointly organized by Smeda and Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (UNISAME) here on Thursday.

He said that the main objective of Smeda is to assist the small and medium enterprises with technical gradation marketing support especially in export markets.

However, Manzur said without developing human resource through training and organization structure as well as giving SMEs easy and quick access to formal capital these objectives could not be achieved.

The regional head of Smeda in Karachi, Ijaz Majeed said that in a short period of seven months the authority has worked on many fronts for the promotion of SMEs.

Speaking on the occasion the convener of UNISAME, Zulfikar Thaver assured full support to Smeda in its efforts to remove regulatory retardants in the way of promoting SMEs.

He pointed out that the loan giving institutions are demanding collaterals from small entrepreneurs and secondly the procedure is lengthy and time consuming.

Thaver said it is a normal practice with loan giving institutions to reject even a feasible project and in case it is accepted entrepreneurs have to undergo lot of hardships regarding registration and other formalities for arranging finances.

Other members of the UNISAME requested the authority to arrange such projects which could work as ‘jump start’ projects to facilitate new entrants. They also demanded that the government should be asked to enhance limit of small loans without collateral.

It was also pointed out that a very large number of items being presently imported could be indigenously manufactured provided the SMEs are encouraged and given fully support at government level.

Similarly, it was stated that there is a lot of talent in the country and engineering goods can be manufactured by SMEs which would save country’s foreign exchange on their imports.

The union members also suggested that if the country only manages to manufacture auto parts as well as some stationery items it will save the country from spending huge foreign exchange and also generate employment.