August 27, 2006	Sunday	Sha'aban 2, 1427

SIALKOT, Aug 26: Small and Medium Enterprise Development Authority (Smeda) has prepared a comprehensive plan for setting up women business incubation centres in Punjab to provide 'hands-on' support to women entrepreneurs.

Official sources said here on Saturday that necessary arrangements were being finalised for setting up the centres.

The prime concept of this project is to help women develop business skills and to enable them to compete effectively in today's marketplace. Talking about other initiatives of Smeda, the sources said centres for agriculture implements would be set up at Daska for streamlining farm implements industry on modern lines.

Likewise, a foundry service centre would be established at Faisalabad for catering to the needs of the textile and agriculture sectors.

The proposed centre would produce textile and agriculture machine parts at local level.

Sources said that Smeda has also finalised a project costing Rs486 million for setting up agro food processing facilities centre in Multan, a business centre in Gujranwala and a sports industries development centre in Sialkot. The work on these projects has been initiated, sources added. —APP