SCCI making efforts for promotion of SMEs’

President Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) Mansoor Ahmed on Sunday said that SCCI had focused its special attention towards enhancing export volume to help strengthen the national economy. Talking to APP, he said that strengthening of national economy had become imperative at this juncture and business community of Sialkot was ready to play its vibrant role with missionary zeal in this regard. The SCCI President underscored the need of promotion and strengthening the SME sector for doubling the export volume. Sialkot is an export-oriented city and hub of cottage industry which represents SME sector and playing its significant role not only in providing employment opportunities but also strengthening the national exchequer, he said.

Mansoor said that SCCI had focused its special attention on the promotion of SME sector of Sialkot and initiated a series of programmes for creating awareness among the SMEs about the fast changing business trends and modern technology enabling them to play their frontline role in enhancing the trade volume. "We are considering to arrange foreign tours for SMEs with the active cooperation of Commerce Ministry and Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP)," he said.

The SCCI President further said that a majority of local SMEs were running their busi- ness on self-fiance bases and without any government assistance, adding that basically unique export culture of Sialkot is based on SMEs set-up and there are very few big industrial units and by virtue this Sialkot is earning US 2 billion dollars through its exports annually.

The step was being taken for the capacity building of SMEs and enabling them to reduce production cost and further improve the quality of their products to cope with the international markets easily, he said.