Media campaign: Rs 40 million grant approved by ECC

The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet has approved a technical supplementary grant Rs 40 million to meet expenditure on media campaign for "Chota Karobar-O-Sannat Imadadi Package" announced for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), well-informed sources told Business Recorder.
Sharing the details, the sources said, on May 13, 2020, Ministry of Industries and Production stated that the Prime Minister recently approved a relief package of Rs 100 billion for the support to SMEs and agriculture sector. In this regard, Ministry of Industries and Production (Mol&P) carried out a wide-ranging exercise through Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) to formulate proposals in order to ensure equitable and transparent disbursement of the relief package.
After comprehensive deliberations, the proposal to provide indirect cash flow support to SMEs through pre-paid electricity was considered to be the most equitable and practicable.
Accordingly, a detailed concept paper was developed and based thereon, a summary was presented before the ECC which approved it on April 27, 2020. The Federal Cabinet has also ratified the subject ECC's decision.
Ministry of Industries and Production (MoI&P) said it was of the view that to operationalise the pre-paid electricity package for the SMEs, it intends to launch an awareness campaign through print and electronic media for effectiveness of the relief package. As for print media campaign, Mol&P has requested the Finance Division for re- appropriation within its Demand Number 56 to the tune of Rs. 10 million. However, electronic media having greater coverage, is a more expensive endeavor and the Ministry does not have the requisite funds for this purpose in the concerned budget head. According to the estimations of Mol&P, funds to the tune of Rs.40 million are expected to be required for the electronic media advertisements.
Ministry of Industries and Production proposed that Finance Division may be requested to allocate funds to the tune of Rs.40 million through Technical Supplementary Grant (TSG) to Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for carrying out the electronic media campaign on the behalf of Mol&P. The allocated funds will be used exclusively to conduct the awareness campaign of Mol&P's "Chota Karobar o Sannat Imadadi Package".