The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) has laid down a strategy to promote Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the province of Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) that would be showcased as a Business and Culture Festival to be held by mid-next month.
The CEO of SMEDA, Hashim Raza, while addressing a meeting at the head office of SMEDA today, said that the government of Pakistan was keen to curb poverty and unemployment through the growth of SMEs. That is why, SMEDA, as per the direction of the Federal Ministry of Industries and Production (MoI & P), is paying special attention to equal growth of SMEs in all regions of the country.
The CEO SMEDA said that most of the existing SMEs in Gilgit-Baltistan were associated with the tourism sector, dealing in processed food, beverages, handicrafts, transport, hospitality, and other tourism-related services, which lacked standardized and quality packaging and innovation.
He was confident that the authority’s interventions in the province would help add value, quality standards, and product development to modern patterns. He said that the current SME policy had a lot of incentives for SMEs in GB and hoped the SMEs’ business, under the SMEDA strategy, would be able to reach out also to the upper Hunza areas, such as Gojal.
The CEO SMEDA expressed gratitude to the MoI & P for supporting SMEDA’s action plan to promote the SME sector in Gilgit-Baltistan and informed that the Gilgit-Baltistan Government, Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation, Hunza Chamber of Small Traders and Small Industries, and the Tourism Department of Gilgit-Baltistan were equally partnered with SMED in arranging the Business and Cultural Festival of Gilgit-Baltistan to be held in the middle of next month.
