The Union of Small & Medium Enterprises (Unisame) in collaboration with an export house has launched Export Management Services Counter (EMSC) at its office.
These services are primarily meant for SME manufacturers, processors and packing companies, who do not have the know how of exports and are reluctant to enter exports because of this lack of knowledge.
Unisame has started these services on the demand of SME factories, which are making exportable items but are not able to market their products internationally and are desirous of exporting their products overseas.
Unisame, through its EMSC, will not only market their products but will also export their products and arrange for the indents, prepare the shipping documents and also have the documents negotiated by the banks.
Zulfikar Thaver, president Unisame, explained in detail the method to the participants. He said the SME wishing to export any product must give us the representative samples and the ex-factory price.
On receipt of the samples & prices, EMSC will commence business by forwarding the samples & prices to the prospective buyers located by EMSC through their network. EMSC will quote the prices after adding freight, forwarding and other expenses to the buyers.
On receipt of orders, the SME exporters can export themselves or EMSC can export the consignment for the SMEs.
Thaver said that the EMSC would operate on the basis of enquiries received or created and goods would be indented or exported under contract on the basis of offer and acceptance of offer resulting in the indent to be issued to the SME exporter by the EMSC.
"We have arranged for complete services right from the introduction stage to the realisation of proceeds stage" and claimed that no other organisation has developed full EMSC for the SMEs. "Now SME factories can export their products without any hesitation."
"If the quality is good and the price is competitive, there is no reason why the item cannot be sold," he said and requested the SMEs to maintain quality and improve packing to make it seaworthy in the first place and secondly attractive for the consumers.
He said the value-addition all over the world is done by the SMEs.
Answering questions the export experts of Unisame EMSC said that the EMSC would cost the SMEs about 2.5 percent of the invoice value besides, of course, the cost of sending samples whenever demanded by the buyers and bank charges of the banks.
The cost of communications would also be paid by the sellers and this would be for the offers, the circulars and the product literature, brochures etc.
FACILITIES: Regarding facilities from the banks, the EMSC would be in a position to arrange for the required facilities based on the specific requirements of each exporter.
The SMEs intending to use the EMSC would have to sign a letter of intent to initiate the search for the buyer of the product of the SME and further activity would be generated on the selection of the targets.
The members complimented the organisers for developing the EMSC and were positive of handsome results for SMEs, who do not have their own export set-up and said this would open the doors for exports of non-traditional items also.