Banking expo for SMEs fails to attract visitors

Thursday, February 12, 2009

By Jawwad Rizvi

LAHORE: The Bank Fair for SMEs-2009 organised by the SBP BSC Lahore in collaboration with the 21 commercial banks for the SME sector was a flop show as no actual SME sector people visited the fair.The organisers brought the students of the technical education institutions and other colleges to show the attendance of the audience in the seminar arranged parallel to the stalls of the banks.The seminar was organised to create awareness among the SME sector people to get the credit facilities from the commercial banks. But instead of the people related with SME sector the students of technical institutions and colleges were sitting in the seminar hall. On the other hand at the commercial banks stall side only media persons and officials of commercial banks were seen performing their duties. Interestingly the SBP stall was occupied by the government technical institution Moghalpura. The people of the institution were sitting there. They hanged their banner there and put the items of their students on display. No SBP official was present found at the designated stall. The News during the visit of the fair area and stalls of commercial banks has found that the bankers were not satisfied with the arrangements and promotional campaign of Bank Fair-2009 for SME sector promotion. Number of bankers on the condition of not mentioning their names said that the publicity and promotion campaign of the Fair was not made despite the greatest importance of the SME sector.They said the SBP had limited the expenses of publicity and promotional campaign to Rs30,000 to each bank which was very meagre for a commercial bank. They said the commercial banks can afford Rs3 to Rs4 lakh for promotional and publicity campaigns of such events. Even at the entrance of Aiwan-e-Iqbal where the event was held no flex banner was displayed. Similarly, no roadside banners were seen around the roads of Aiwan-e-Iqbal as in the past whenever any fair or conference were held at Aiwan-e-Iqbal the conference managers hang banners and posters.Meanwhile, at the inaugurating session, the Small and Medium Enterprises Authority (SMEDA) CEO Shahid Rashid said the mounting task of SME development cannot be accomplished without sincere cooperation of the banking industry in the country. Shahid Rashid said the SMEDA had been striving hard to create a conducive environment for SMEs in the country. The major success in this regard has been achieved by evolving the first ever SME policy, which is now on implementation stage, he said adding that the visible change in SME development requires a sincere cooperation from the financial institutions. He acknowledged that the state bank was taking bold initiatives for making availability of financial resources to the SMEs through formal resources. He expressed extreme pleasure over assembling around 27 major banks of the country under one roof to introduce their financial products specially designed for SMEs. He emphasized to strengthen and stabilize this move in the banking industry for the real growth of SMEs in the country.Chief Manager of SBP Banking Services Corporation (BSC) Lahore Barbruce Ishaq in his address terming the first Bank Fair a great success expressed thanks to SMEDA, LCCI, Punjab Small Industries Corporation (PSIC) and to all participating banks for arranging the event. He hoped the Fair would prove to be helpful for the existing SMEs as well as the prospective SMEs with regard to availability of finance through DFIs.