The Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (Unisame) has again appealed to the government to ensure easily accessible credit facility for SMEs, specially for new entrants.
In a meeting held at the Unisame office on Monday, the union invited the attention of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to difficulties being faced by the new entrants in small businesses and cottage (home-based) industries.
In view of these difficulties, it was necessary that the government should establish an SME Fund to finance small industries, specially being installed by newcomers, the meeting demanded.
The union alleged that new SMEs were being denied the credit facility by banks and DFIs on account of their inability to provide financial statements of last three years, which is a requirement of most of commercial banks and DFIs.
In this regard, Unisame president Zulfiqar Thaver appealed to the Prime Minister to direct banks and DFIs to give due consideration to newcomers and instead of financial statements they should rely on experience and qualifications of entrepreneurs, while demanding guarantees of their sponsors or supporters if necessary.
He added that banks were financing new projects of large-scale sector but new projects of SMEs were being neglected and subjected to a lot of turmoil unnecessarily.
The union office-bearers also expressed their concerns about banks and DFIs for not attending to the small businesses as their main focus remained on the large and medium sectors only owing to the cost of managing their accounts.
The union emphasised that it had convinced and motivated many SMEs to set up recycling plants in various items but the SMEs were coming back to the union unsuccessful and depressed by the apprehensive attitude of lenders.
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