There are a lot of hurdles in the development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) sector due to lack of concrete data and quantitative research, said Federal Secretary Textile, Shahid Rashid while speaking at the launching ceremony of 'SMEDA Research Journal' organised by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) here on Monday.
SMEDA Chief Executive Officer, Yousaf Naseem Khokhar, Chairman Garments City Awais Mazhar Hussain, and renowned economist, Dr Saeed Shafqat also spoke on the occasion. Rashid pointed out that prominent data reporting agencies were unable to provide accurate statistics on SME sector. This deficiency severely hinders the performance measurement of policymakers, he said. In this situation, SMEDA's dedicated journal of economic research, specifically tailored to the dynamics of Pakistan's SME sector, would prove to be a good source of bridging the missing link, he added.
Earlier, Khokhar said that there are almost 3.2 million economic enterprises, which were constrained by many factors such as access to finance, regulatory burden, weak support infrastructure, low technology base, and limited human resource capacity with an underdeveloped entrepreneurial culture.
The government needs to introduce policies to overcome such constraints for the growth of SMEs in the country, he said adding that SMEDA as a service provider was making endeavours to fill in the gap, despite having very limited resources, he said. Khokhar hoped that SMEDA Research Journal will prove to be extremely useful in the development of the SME sector in Pakistan and urged other organisations to join hands with SMEDA to strengthen the cause of SME development for curbing poverty and unemployment in the country.
It is notable that the first issue of SMEDA Research Journal contains 4 cogent articles addressing core SME issues including "Impact of SME Entrepreneur's Education on Quality of Doing Business in Pakistan", "SMEs Inaccessibility to Finance: The Bottom Line", "State of Data Availability on SMEs and Its Implications for Policy Formulation" and "SME Development in Pakistan and Its contribution to Economic", which were highly appreciated by the eminent researchers and economic experts present at the ceremony. Besides SME experts, economic researchers and trade bodies' representatives, General Manager Central Support, Hashim Tareen, General Manager Business and Sector Development Services, Sultan Tiwana, General Manager Outreach, Syed Iqbal A. Kidwai, General Manager Policy and Planning, Bakhtiar Khan were also present.
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