Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) has distributed grants of Rs1.287 billion amongst 1532 terrorism and flood SMEs of KPK and FATA under the Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) funded Economic Revitalisation of KP and FATA.
The MDTF funded project for the crisis-hit SMEs of KPK and FATA is being implemented by the World Bank through SMEDA.
Under the project a grant amounting to Rs828 million has been distributed in over 1000 SMEs of KPK and Rs458 million in FATA. The distribution is carried out in a very transparent manner and the top national anti-graft agency, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had certified the project as corruption free.
Besides, the terrorism affected shopkeepers, the beneficiaries of the grants are included the SMEs of different clusters particularly, marble, traditional textile and printing industries.
"A bomb blast in our bazaar had wrecked our shops and food items put for display of buyers were destroyed. After the incident we were not in position to carry our business as the whole-sale shops were demanding advance payment and it was the cheque of a grant of Rs0.8 million that bailed our business out of the crisis," told Sabir, the proprietor of a General Store in the CD Market at Nishterabad.
Similarly, marble units of District Buner, one of the affected terrorism was also rehabilitated with the grant assistance of ERKF project through distribution of an amount of Rs262.3 million with an average grant of Rs1.2 million amongst 223 units.
"During the period of militancy marble units over 450 were closed and their machinery was taken away by the militants and after the end of the military operation we restarted from scratches, Rasheed Khan, president of the Marble Association told this scribe.
He said that the grant provided under the ERKF project has supported us to repair machinery and operate our units.
Murad Ali Khan, another beneficiary of project says that he had repair damaged machinery and purchased raw material from the amount, he had received in shape of grant. He said that Buner, a district of the Malakand region was among the worst terrorism affected area.
He said that their machinery was out of order and unit was closed. The militancy, he said had rendered them unemployed and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and it was that grant paid to them under the ERKF project, which enabled them to restart their businesses.
In this connection, when contacted Provincial Chief, SMEDA, Javed Iqbal Khattak said that besides, distribution of grants in small terrorism and flood affected traders, ERKF had also played major role in the technology up-gradation in mineral sector.
Under the project, he said work on the establishment of five common facilitation centres (CFCs) is full swing to provide machinery to clusters and up-grade their businesses.
Machinery installed under the project will be utilised collectively by the concerned clusters. The step will help increase their products and enhance their quality. He was hopeful that the provision of such facilities will help increase the exports of such cluster form industries and generate employment opportunities.
Under the ERKF project, SMEDA is going to establish CFCs for honey processing, marble processing clusters while CNG cluster will be provided cylinder testing facility while similar facilities will be installed for agricultural processing clusters of Swat & Chitral and Hotel Association cluster of Naran.
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