RAWALPINDI, June 20: Small and medium enterprises are playing an important role in the socio-economic uplift of the country and providing 54 percent of the total employment.

President Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industry Hussain Ahmad Ozgen said this while talking to a group of students who visited the Rebuild Afghanistan Industrial Fair organised by the chamber here.

The RCCI chief said there were about 400,000 small scale manufacturing units, 600 service sector units and one million retailers in the country. They constitute about 99 percent of all enterprises in the country, he said. The large-scale enterprises form only nine percent of the employment force, Mr Ozgen said.

The students evinced keen interest in the exhibition and put questions to the chamber's head about different matters. To a question, he said high rates of utility charges, particularly of electricity, were affecting the cost of production, hampering export volume rendering the country's products incompatible with the international world market.

To successfully face the challenges of the World Trade Organisation and South Asia Free Trade Agreement in future, the government should provide more relief to traders, he said.

Mr Ozgen briefed the students on the objectives of the exhibition and the functioning of the chamber. He said the exhibition would help promote SMEs in the region and reducing poverty and unemployment. About SMEs, he said these were the backbone of economy and played a dynamic role in the progress of both developed and developing countries.