"The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) has facilitated an investment of over Rs 29.73 billion during last decade through handholding of the upcoming SMEs and up-gradation of 27 existing SME clusters by providing them common facility centers of Rs 2.772 billion as PSDP projects."
SMEDA Chief Executive Officer Sher Ayub Khan revealed this at a meeting held in SMEDA head office to celebrate the "World SME Day". He appreciated the United Nations General Assembly for designating 27th June as the International Day of SMEs. He said that 95 percent of the enterprises in the world belonged to micro, small and medium-sized businesses which account for about 60 percent of the private sector employment.
These enterprises can in fact become the engines that sustain growth for long-term development in developing countries, he said, and expressed gratitude to the International Council for Small Business (ICSB), who declared 27th June as a World SME Day last year during its 61st Annual World Conference held at United Nations.
The SMEDA chief said that like rest of the world, the SMEs were playing pivotal role in creating job opportunities in Pakistan as well. The SMEDA is pursuing the SME development cause as a key economic reform agenda of the country like many governments around the world, he said, adding that there exists a number of SME development organizations around the world that have played a major role in supporting, steering and coordinating the SME development in their countries.
Small & Medium Business Administration (SMBA), Republic of Korea, KOSGEB, Republic of Turkey, Small Business Administration (SBA), USA, are spending heavy budget on the SME development agenda. But the resources given to SMEDA has no comparison with them, he commented, and informed that SMEDA, despite to scarcity of funds, had covered the development side through public sector development program and a set of over two dozen common facility centers had been completed through PSDP funds.
Giving reasons for SMEDA's entrance into public sector development programme, the CEO SMEDA informed that SMEDA through interaction with stakeholders of SME sectors had identified certain potential clusters of SMEs which were unable to tap export market despite surplus production just due to unavailability of the modern technology.