FACILITATING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MERELY DEFINING SMES
President UNISAME Zulfikar Thaver has urged all stakeholders not to waste precious time at meetings on deliberations on SME definition and to simply comprehend the fact that an SME for all practical purposes is one who is not enjoying the benefits of ample resources and one who is striving hard to manage the owned enterprise with meager resources.
As chairman of the definition committee in the SME Task Force, he said he had struggled to come up with a uniform definition which was broad based to include even the private schools and hospitals and included every commercial activity of an entrepreneur namely the hawker, the shopkeeper, retailer, wholesaler, importer, exporter, service provider, consultants, manufacturer and even the farmer. The parameters were employment strength up to 250, the turn over up to 300 millions and the productive assets up to 100 millions.
In other words except the multinationals, the wealthy and big manufacturers all were rightly considered as SMEs. Actually what matters is facilitating the entrepreneur to grow and contribute to the economy and join the mainstream.
It has been noticed that the commercial banks and financial institutions do not go by definitions but by the risk in financing any enterprise. The narrow definitions are becoming hurdles and are of no consequence and for this reason the definition was broad based.
However he said the Task Force could not impose the definition and it was later amended on the basis of identifying the micro, the small and the medium.
It would be best to focus on the facilities which could be provided and how the micro, the small to medium sized entrepreneurs could be promoted and developed.
The economy cannot grow without the promotion and development of the majority sector which is the engine of growth, the backbone and generates employment.
Thaver said since the large sector is shy and new industries in the private sector are negligible, it is advisable that the SME sector, the housing and the farming sector are given top priority to grow.
He appreciated the role of foreign donors who are keen to promote the majority sector in Pakistan and also the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) and urged them to promote and develope the primary sector and focus on facilitating them and encouraging them to move to the next level.
Posted in: Press Releases
Comments are closed.