LAHORE: Minister of State for Industries and Production Sardar Muhammad Arshad Khan Leghari on Tuesday assured to make SMEDA funding as important part of the government’s Annual Development Plan.
While having a briefing on Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) at its head office, he observed that poverty and unemployment prevailing in the country could not be controlled without promoting small and medium enterprises and to achieve this goal, the government would strengthen SMEDA role. He appreciated the development projects established by SMEDA and assured to support the new development initiatives through Ministry of Industries and Production. However, he suggested to evolve a mechanism to monitor growth of a growing business sector so as to avoid unnecessary saturation and keep the level of a particular business’s expansion within limits of market demand.
Sardar Arshad Khan Laghari pointed out that Pakistan, being an agricultural country, had a great potential in dairy and livestock sector that could be exploited to fortify the economy. He cited the Australia and Holland, who had emerged as strongest economies of world just because of livestock sector. “We should also make a comprehensive strategy to up-grade this sector on modern lines,” he said and appreciated SMEDA for initiating a ‘Controlled Shed Program’ for dairy farming.
He urged to expand this programme among farmers’ community across the country.
SMEDA CEO Sher Ayub Khan, during his presentation on SMEDA, described the services, projects and special initiatives being run by SMEDA to promote SMEs. Besides providing SMEs with the technical, management and marketing support, SMEDA had established a network of Common Facility Centers and Help Desks in all major business cities. He added that about 20 projects had been completed by SMEDA under Public Sector Development Programme, which had enhanced export quality and capacity of a number of SME clusters including Fruit processing, sports goods manufacturing, red chilies drying, honey production and foundry industry.
SMEDA Board Member M.A. Jabbar also appealed the Minister of State to provide SMEDA with the requisite funding for accomplishing SME development initiatives. The meeting was specially attended by SMEDA General Manager (Central Support) Fuad Hashim Rabbani, GM (Policy & Planning) Ms. Nadia Jahangir Seth, GM (Business & Sector Development) Ashfaq Ahmad, GM (Monitoring and Evaluation) Ahmad Mansoor Chaudhry and GM (Outreach-1) Raja Hassanien Javed.
