Prime Minister’s directive to speed up lending to small and medium businesses, reading this headline, instead of reading its details, the mind went to the weddings of the 50s and 60s when business families of Pakistan did not consider their sons’ marriage as an occasion of happiness but as a second factory.
Big wholesalers used to hold the key of another shop in his hand, a new machine would come with a marriage, a new unit would appear or a new shop would open.
In this way, a wedding would create twenty jobs in a factory, five or six employees would be hired for the shop, the bride and groom used to use their bicycles to go home, but today, factories do not open with marriage, medium-sized businesses do not start, but the son or son-in-law is given a land cruiser worth crores.
The status increases but it does not increase the production of products and this is the real economic crisis of Pakistan when the capital is invested in the vehicle and does not reach the machine, when marriage is made a means of display and huge amount of money is invested in the purchase of luxury items, then any economic policy, IMF loan, new policies created by the officials of the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Industry and Production all fail and the original purpose of giving more loans is lost.
Can those days come back? When marriage means a new factory comes into existence, if there is experience in running a shop, then a new shop is waiting for it, when a new factory is created, dozens of new recruits are also made, the need board from watchman to manager is put up, then the loans will also be meaningful and the wheel of the economy will also move and the economic development of the country will increase. There was a time when economic growth was even 7 or 8 percent.
In the last few days, a SMEDA meeting was held under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister. In which the Prime Minister directed the relevant institutions to speed up the process of providing loans to small and medium businesses on easy terms through banks and other financial institutions.
In the briefing, it was informed that training workshops were organized in six cities of the country in the recent period to increase the capacity of SMEs. The need of America is to expand from six cities to 60 to 100 cities and increase the number of students to millions by organizing a small amount of students.
IT training is also given to students by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, but this number is very few, if not non-existent. Since this training is given at the government level, its number also needs to be increased many times.
On the occasion of this meeting, a comprehensive road map covering the next three years was presented. In the meeting, various proposals for strengthening the SME sector, solving the problems and sustainable development were discussed in detail.
According to the plan, most of the loans will be interest-based. It has been experienced many times before that loans taken on interest never prove to be remunerative. As far as the repayment rate of the loans is concerned, other such measures, conditions, guarantees can be asked in this regard so that the repayment of the given loans can be secured.
Generally, it has been observed that by taking a loan on interest, the loss is shown in it, thus the loan is forgiven. For small and medium businesses, be it cottage industries or any other form of SME, guidance can be taken from Bangladesh, which claims that 99 percent of loans given by Grameen Bank are repaid.
In this regard, it should also be taken into account that those businesses which have the capacity to provide employment to more people, such business organizations and businesses should be provided loans as soon as possible and on soft terms without interest as per their needs.
Even today, a large part of the business in Pakistan consists of SMEs and they provide a large number of jobs and there are very few of them who are benefiting from bank loans and some people say that there are many difficulties in getting the loans they are getting.
The present proposed plan covers all these issues which can be expected to increase employment, production and exports by issuing a clear and simple road map for the SMEs which are the backbone of the country’s economy.
