LAHORE, June 24: The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (Smeda) is launching Pakistan’s first B2B, and business information portal, Industrial Information Network (IIN), here on Saturday.

This was stated by Smeda chief executive officer Shahab Khawaja at a news conference on Friday. The IIN portal, he said, had been designed to become the largest source of information generation, exchange and dissemination, towards providing value-added support and services to the local industry.

“One of the primary objectives of IIN is to promote the use of B2B e-commerce within the country. Another objective is to link local businesses through IT with international buyers, suppliers, trade facilitation bodies and the government institutions so that they can also use e-world and get their share out of this fast growing trade channel,” he said.

Mr Khawaja said the portal would become a one-stop shop for Pakistani businesses for all their information and e-commerce needs. “It will facilitate 45,000 SMEs and large scale businesses.” He was hopeful that IIN would in the coming years also offer such services to the industry as eLearning and eShop to give members a chance to maintain the details of their products online as potential marketing tools to increase the possibility of getting business orders, online loan calculator, and the facility for applying for loans and getting their approval online, legal tool kit — where the businessmen would be required to key in information regarding their business.

“The businesses will also be provided with a list of all the laws, rules and regulations that apply in their line of business, WAP enabled services — the facility to get live rates of mobile devices, and live container tracking facilitating exports and imports tracking their shipment online.”

The portal, a project of ministries of industries and production and information technology and telecommunications, will be launched by Industries and Production Minister Jehangir Tareen.

The project will initially focus on textile — ginning, spinning and weaving, and leather sectors. More sectors would be added later on. It will cost Rs39 million over a three-year period.

Mr Khawaja said IIN offered state-of-the-art set of services that include a unique platform for international outreach and provision of updated international business information, international trade inquiries where buyers and sellers could contact each other directly, international business directories, information on trade statistics, international trends, and analysis reports for strategic decision making. In addition, he said comprehensive sector specific information on financing, government rules and regulations, business start-up procedures, and import/export procedures would also be offered.

He said business worth $4,160 million was transacted through e-commerce and was billed to grow to $10,800 million by 2006.