The Union of Small & Medium Enterprises (Unisame) has congratulated Jehangir Khan Tareen, Federal Minister for Industries, Production & Special Initiatives; Khwaja Shahab, Chief Executive Small & Medium Enterprises Development Authority (Smeda) and the Governor of State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Dr Ishrat Hussain, for extending support and expertise in finalising the SMEs Policy and draft of SME Act 2005 in line with the recommendations of the SME Task Force, constituted by the government.
Zulfikar Thaver, chairman of Definition, Valuation, Feedback & Monitoring Committee, said, "Definition recommended by my committee was acceptable to all stakeholders," according to a press release of Unisame on Friday.
He said: "We accepted the SBP definition, except that we separated the small in order to give the small sector the attention it deserves."
He appreciated the sincere remarks of the Federal Industries Minister that SMEs are the vehicle and an essential and integral part of the economy and that there is need for a cohesive national policy.
He said the CEO of Smeda played an important role and conducted 15 months of extensive rounds with the stakeholders and prepared a comprehensive natural policy and he institutionalised the support systems.
He said the State Bank gave kick-start to SMEs by announcing the Prudential Regulations. He said the SBP had done a lot of homework on SMEs and "we all benefited from their experience and hard work". Unisame members requested the government to implement the policy in letter and spirit otherwise they expressed their apprehensions that it would remain just a document.-PR