KARACHI: The Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (UNISAME) being deeply concerned about falling exports of textiles and made ups, rice, cotton, wheat, maize, castor seeds, dates, sugar, salt, spices and general merchandise due to high cost of production has set up export house for the SMEs to enable them meet the challenges by gearing up and scientifically overcoming the hurdles to remain competitive.
President UNISAME Zulfikar Thaver said there are buyers for Pakistani goods and are willing to pay more for Pakistani goods due to their quality and strength but because of the substantial difference in cost of production in Pakistan due to the energy crisis a strategy is required to deal with the situation of controlling production cost and addressing the issues of wastage and spending more than necessary.
The SME units just cannot afford to waste energy, material, time and resources and have to get organized. Some of the SME units visited by UNISAME experts observed that the owners were liberal and not economizing.
It is painful to note that the units were not collecting the materials which could be recycled for commercial gains, he said.
He said when energy audit of several units was carried out it was determined that the units were consuming almost 35 percent more energy than required. Likewise logistics audit revealed that more fuel was consumed and the logistics lacked planning and several movements were extravagant.
The challenging situation demands new approach and calls for revisiting production schedules, remodelling products, changing designs, decreasing packing cost and increasing productivity.
He urged the SME units to reopen their value addition units of parboiling rice, wheat, maize, cotton ginning, sugar, textiles made ups and linen and not to lose hope but take it as a challenge and gear up with strategy and scientific approach to production based on the rules of productivity.
The UNISAME Export House is available to guide the SMEs to export their quality products to countries which are looking out for quality products and willing to pay little more but are demanding goods of international standards with international packing and timely deliveries.
The UNISAME Export House has urged the government to impose export duties on fruits and vegetables to make them available first for domestic consumption and secondly for value addition products for exports of dehydrated vegetables and value added products of fruits like jams, jellies, marmalade, syrups and pulps.
The export house also called for discouraging export of cotton and urged the government to promote export of finished goods of textiles rather than cotton which will give a boost to export of cotton made ups.
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