By Staff Reporter
QUETTA: Pakistan’s sparsely-populated Balochistan province has thrashed out a strategy to promote small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to advance support services in three agriculture, manufacturing and services sectors.
The strategy was discussed at the SME working group meeting held in Quetta.
Role of SMEs in economy
SMEs in Pakistan account for 35 percent of value addition, contributing to 30 percent of the national gross domestic product (GDP), and 25 percent of total exports.
Regarding social development, Small and Medium Enterprises also account for 78 per cent of the non-agricultural employment in the country.
The SME Competitiveness Strategy will yield an action-oriented and precise framework, which does not stop at simply identifying broad objectives, but go into detailed activities, targets, and impact measures, indicating what exactly needs to be done and by whom, within what time frame, and with what resources.
Tailored to meet the specific needs of Balochistan, the strategy will also address challenges raised by the private and public sectors and will be instrumental in empowering the identification of opportunities to enhance SME competitiveness.
The objective is to develop a set of conducive programmes to strengthen and modernize Balochistan’s SMEs, build up the entrepreneurship and innovation of the enterprises, and enable public services to reach SMEs across the province.
Balochistan Chief Secretary Abdul Aziz Uqaili appreciated the Industries and Commerce Department and the European Union-funded and International Trade Centre implemented GRASP project for making progress in developing the SME Competitiveness Strategy for Balochistan.
He said that Balochistan’s government is keen, progressive, and forthcoming in adopting and implementing the strategy. He said formalization of the economy and access to finance and technology are the key challenges confronting the private sector generally and, the SMEs, particularly in the province.
He said that the technical paper was a detailed and comprehensive document that covers the key challenges SMEs face in the province and proposes pragmatic solutions for the development of SMEs in Balochistan. The government will fully support the ongoing process of SME strategy development and will provide resources for its proper implementation.
Secretary of Industries and Commerce Abid Saleem Qureshi said that the department was developing an SME strategy as envisioned in the SME policy of the federal government and hoped that once approved and implemented, the strategy would contribute to helping develop SMEs and the private sector in the province.
