A meeting of SME working committee will be held today. The meeting will be chaired by Zulfikar Thaver, President of the Union of Small & Medium Enterprises (Unisame) and Chairman Working Committee of SME Task Force Ministry of Industries & Production.
Thaver mentioned that the meeting would have experts like Dr A. R. Kemal Director, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics and Dr Ejaz Shafi Gillani Chairman & Chief Executive, Gallup Pakistan, besides senior officials from Export Promotion Bureau (EPB), Ministries of Finance, Commerce, Agriculture, Federal Bureau of Statistics, Habib Bank, Orix Leasing, SME Bank, SME Leasing, Smeda and Chairmen of several associations and trade bodies.
He personally requested all the members of the working committee to be present as he declared meeting as an important one which would recommend definition of SME to the Task Force and later to be incorporated in the SME Policy to be promulgated and implemented shortly.
He pointed out that the SMEs were inclined to accept the State Bank of Pakistan Definition as appropriate for the Medium sector and termed Smeda's definition suitable to small/micro sector.
He said that we did not want to impose any definition but would request stakeholders to have a uniform definition and his committee would strive to arrive at a common definition to make the identification easy for targeted upliftment and support of the sector.
Referring to a survey conducted recently, he mentioned that there were 3.8 millions SMEs apart from Micro enterprises in the country, having different requirements altogether.
He suggested that the SMEs should be treated separately as the requirements of small/micro were different from the medium.