Trade bodies urged to look after interests of SMEs
President UNISAME Zulfikar Thaver said most of the trade bodies have a majority of SME members yet they ignore the issues of the sector and plead the cause of the majority sector with the ministries of commerce, finance and industries.
He said that none of the trade bodies took up the matter of relief for the sector in terms of the SME definition which clearly states the parameters of employment strength, turnover and productive assets.
He said that entrepreneurs employing up to 250 employees, having a turnover of less than Rs300 million and productive assets of Rs100 million are considered SMEs and under the SME policy are entitled to relief where ever applicable.
He lamented that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has disregarded the uniform legal definition and only allowed relief up to a turnover of Rs50 million and issued notifications that SMEs having a turnover of more than Rs50 millions are liable to act as withholding agents and deduct withholding tax from the suppliers and deposit it in the treasury. He urged the trade bodies to take up the matter with the FBR.
The Union has offered to help the trade bodies and urged the trade bodies in this regard.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 22nd, 2011.
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How can you make policy when you have not surveyed the SME sector in ten/fifteen years? What is your data-base and how has the SME sector evolved over the years? What are it's structural characteristics in terms of capital, labor, output, employment, wages, productivity and exports?
Each year, the National Accounts simply puts in the same growth rate for the "Small-Scale Manufacturing" sector (7.5% per annum). I presume this is the SME sector or does this understate its contribution or over-lap with the Large-Scale manufacturing sector?
No one has an answer.
Yet we have a SMEDA in each province. What do they do?