PESHAWAR, Oct 20: The Export Promotion Bureau organized a one-day seminar on “Export Finance Scheme” here on Saturday which was attended by more than 40 participants, representing pharmaceutical, engineering, leather, furniture and banking sectors.

Director General EPB, Karachi, Pir Mohammad Khan Bangash, Trade Finance Consul-tant, Tahir Jamil and director BSL, State Bank of Pakistan, Qazi Abdul Muqtadir addressed the seminar, said a press release.

The EPB is organizing a series of seminars on the subjects of export finance scheme, Pakistan Export Finance Guarantee Agency, foreign currency export facility and the export finance scheme of the Islamic Development Bank.

The objectives of the seminar was to explain the main features of the facilities and institutions created by the government to meet the export finance requirements of the exporters.  

The seminar helped in removing the apprehensions of the business community about the ISO certification, and made them realise that ISO certification was not only a requirement for export, but also good for local/domestic sales, giving an edge to companies over their non-certified competitors. Both the federal and the NWFP governments provide subsidies to industries of NWFP for acquiring the ISO certification.

These incentives and training courses had resulted in the training of over 50 companies of NWFP representing pharmaceutical, textile, food, tobacco, cement, marble, furniture, electronics and auditing firms planning to become ISO certified auditors.

So far, 52 companies of the frontier province have been granted ISO-9000 certification and 15 are in the process.