KARACHI, July 14: The Small and Medium Size Enterprises Development Authority (Smeda) is preparing a policy document for the development of small and medium enterprises. It will be enforced from March 2005.

This was stated by Smeda chief executive officer Shahab Khawaja at a luncheon meeting organized by the Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (Unisame) here on Wednesday. The objective of the meeting was to solicit suggestions and proposals from the representatives of SMEs.

Giving details about the working on the policy document, Mr Khawaja said that he was holding meetings in the four provinces and Azad Kashmir in order to accommodate maximum suggestions and proposals.

He said without identifying core issues the policy document on SMEs would not be pragmatic and it would also fail to produce desired results. He asked the SME representatives to come forward and give their suggestions before the policy was finalized.

Mr Khawaja said that a draft document of the policy would be ready by the end of this year and thereafter it would be presented before the prime minister. After getting the consent of the prime minister the document would be placed before the cabinet for final approval.

However, the Smeda chief said before working on policy document the government had set up four committees of task force with different mandates to cover. The purpose of these committees is to identify major issues confronting SMEs, and how to enhance their capacity.

Mr Khawaja said the committees had representatives from public and private sectors who were interacting with each other and the ministries concerned. They are asked to identify all obstacles that are hindering the growth and development of SMEs.

"There are issues related to availability of finance and bank demand for providing collateral against funding to SMEs. Such matters could not be resolved so easily and need full government support and enabling environments for the growth and development of SMEs," he added.

Referring to a task force headed by Unisame president Zulfikar Thaver, Mr Khawaja said its main task was to resolve the issue of SME definition. He said at present there were several definitions used by different government and private institutions for the SMEs.

Without reaching to a single definition, he said the SMEs could not get facilitations and services from different government and private organizations. Consequently, it was necessary that such issues be resolve before finalizing the policy document.