World Bank to collaborate with Smeda on promotion of SMEs

The World Bank has expressed interest to collaborate with Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (Smeda) on promotion of SMEs in Pakistan. Johan F. Speakman, Private Sector Development Specialist of the World Bank, while leading a 7-member delegation met with the Smeda Chief Executive Officer Yousaf Naseem Khokhar here on Thursday. He said that the World Bank was towing a policy of strengthening SME development institutions in the South Asia region.
Speakman said that the SME sector in Pakistan had a vast potential to grow. Smeda, despite having very limited resources, was striving hard to explore this potential to the optimal level, he added. He further said that the World Bank, like neighbouring countries of the region, was keen to promote working relations with SME development institutions in Pakistan as well.
"We are interested to strengthen the institutions like Smeda", he said and urged the Smeda experts to identify the areas requiring Word Bank's assistance in SME development. He assured that World Bank would extend all possible assistance also to facilitate access to finance for local SMEs. Earlier, Yousaf Naseem Khokhar gave a detailed presentation on running projects, services and future planning of Smeda and said that a five year business plan of Smeda was being compiled to expedite SME development needs of the country.
Besides, an organisational restructuring plan was also underway to enable Smeda playing more effective role for development of SMEs in the country, he said adding that such initiatives were taken on a Smeda evaluation report issued by World Bank last year, which identified that Pakistan was a country spending the lowest budget on SME development at world level. He said that government was fully aware of the SMEs' importance in curbing poverty and enhancing employments. He hoped that government would soon make arrangements to allocate more resources for SME development.