SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) Sector is the growth engine of our national economy and State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has been trying its optimum best to facilitate private banks and financial institutions to increase availability of loans to SME sector from 8 to 17% under its vision-2020, said Muhammad Akbar Deputy Chief Manager SBP.
He was addressing an awareness session organized in collaboration with Alflah Bank (AB) here Monday. He told that currently 174,000 SME units are getting financial facilities offered by SBP while efforts have been expedited to increase these numbers to 5 Lac by the year 2020. "This will not only strengthen the SME sector but also gear up the pace of economic development in the country", he told and added that SBP is providing loans at 2% mark-up only while the private banks are extending this facility with addition of 4% increase. He told that this scheme is continuing for last many years but a major chunk of SME is unable to get its due benefits only due to the lack of awareness.
Appreciating the role of SBP in facilitating SME sector, he said that it is not only playing a role of regulator but also discharging its liabilities as facilitator. "SBP has issued clear instructions to the managers of all private banks to exploit their linkages with their concerned account holders and provide them maximum information about the facilities offered to the SME sector. He told that that policy for the promotion of SME Finance is consisting of 9 pillars including Improving Regulatory Frame Work, Up Scaling of MFBs, Risk Mitigation Strategy, and Simplified Procedure for SME Financing, Program Based Lending & Value Chain Financing, Capacity Building and Awareness Creation, Handholding of SMEs-NFAS, Leveraging Technology to Promote SME Financing and Simplification of Taxation Regime.
Commenting on the challenges faced by the SMEs, Deputy Chief Mangier said that implementation on this scheme is imperative to harvest its true benefits. Rai Shahid Amin Regional Head AB also mentioned problems faced by SMEs and told that AB has taken maximum steps to facilitate their SMEs clients.
While responding to queries during Question-Answer session Muhammad Akbar-DCM and Rai Shahid Amin facilitated the participants for true understanding of features of SME 2020 strategy.