October 21, 2007	Sunday	Shawwal 8, 1428

KARACHI, Oct 20: The Sindh Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry will sign MoUs with women chambers of Bangladesh, India, and Malaysia to exchange information on welfare of women entrepreneurs.

The MoUs will be signed in December at the Saarc women entrepreneurs conference to be held in Karachi. Correspondence with these chambers is in progress to discuss modalities of cooperation.

Giving details of the proposed MoUs, Robina Rashid, senior vice chairman of the SWCCI, told Dawn that under the MoUs women entrepreneurs will visit each other’s country to see the development made by businesswomen in the member countries and deliver information on programmes initiated for welfare of women in their countries.

The SWCCI is also working on a project to arrange concessional financing for women entrepreneurs to help them set up small businesses. It is planning to hold a finance conference in November to discuss ways and means of providing financing to women on reduced mark-up.

State Bank Governor Dr. Shamshad Akhtar will be invited to chair the conference. It will also be addressed by the former SBP governor, Dr Ishrat Hussain.

Ms Rubina said the chamber would request the State Bank to direct big banks to set up an exclusive women financing section to help women get loans for their businesses without collateral. She said that in BD women entrepreneurs are given $22,000 interest-free loan without collateral for setting up industries.

In India, women businessmen get loans on four per cent mark- up.

The chamber is also working on a proposal to request big businesses to attach one women entrepreneur with their enterprise and help them set up small industry of her own. This would provide guidance to business women to successfully run their businesses.

The women chamber is collecting data on working women in Karachi and Hyderabad with a view to ascertain their exact number and plan programme for their betterment.

The chamber feels that the number of working women doing odd jobs is very high. Most of them do hard working jobs but get very little wages.

The data will help government design a policy to help women workers. The data collection drive would later be extended to the entire province.

It may be pointed out the Sindh Women Chamber has urged the government to announce a separate policy for women entrepreneurs as women businesses do not fulfill requirements laid down in the recently announced SME policy to get financing from banks on concessional rates.

The women chamber welcomed the setting up of a glass designing centre in Hyderabad to train women of the bangle industry in modern glass products.