The mankind started life by exploiting the resources available in the surroundings i.e. water, trees, stones, mineral, herbs and the man-friendly animals like horses, cows and dogs etc.

The small and medium enterprises began with the activation of human brain that started adding value to the available resources and created shelters in caves of trees and mountains, produced vegetables, fruits and grains through cultivation.

With the power of brain, the human being also gained control over the animals and exploited their strength for movement to the remote and odd areas. Hence, the mankind discovered the further exploitable items hidden in mountains, deserts, rivers and sea. The process of value addition in the natural resources turned into expertise and professions, exchange of which was transformed into small and medium businesses.

Businesses of house building, food making, utensils and dress manufacturing created the early civilizations, which rose to the present level after millions of the years interaction of human mind with the nature. Nature has been providing the scoop, and brain has been adding value to it. The present civilizations bearing state of the art technology, techniques and expertise is result of the same process, still going on to the further discoveries and inventions; consequently creating new areas of the trade and industry.

Since the SMEs are easy to establish as per the potential, experience and skill available to an individual or group of individuals, the ratio of SMEs all over the world is above 90% of the total businesses. In Pakistan, too, the SMEs constitute nearly 90% of all the enterprises in Pakistan, which employ 80% of the non-agricultural labor force; and their share in the annual GDP is 40%, approximately. However, unlike large enterprises in the formal sector, a small and medium enterprise is constrained by financial and technological resources. This inherent characteristic of an SME makes it imperative that there should be a mechanism through which it may get support in different functions of business including technical upgradation, marketing, financial and human resource training & development.

SMEDA is the flagship organization of Pakistan which is providing the necessary services to help SMEs overcome the weaknesses that are endogenous to their very nature. It is an autonomous body working under the umbrella of the Ministry of Industries & Production and contributes towards the growth and development of SMEs in Pakistan through; creation of conducive and enabling regulatory environment; development of industrial clusters; and by providing business development services to SMEs in all areas

Adhering to a clear mandate and a logical path to achieve quantitatively verifiable targets, SMEDA carries out comprehensive analyses of international trends, national policies and other macroeconomic factors affecting SMEs in Pakistan for a gradual progress towards the creation of a favorable business environment for its key clients – the SMEs of Pakistan. At the same time, SMEDA also interacts with the SMEs working in industrial sectors such as agriculture, fisheries, textiles, handloom weaving, transport, leather, marble & granite, carpets and light engineering. This interaction takes place at the individual as well as collective level to provide proactive and responsive financial, technical, management and marketing services to SMEs.

At the collective level, SMEDA addresses the problems and needs of SMEs in the form of an industrial cluster – a concentration of largely homogenous enterprises within a certain geographical area. SMEDA interacts with the stakeholders operating in such clusters on a regular basis and collects firsthand information about their problems and needs. During this interaction, the issues are prioritized and the important problems are selected for detailed working through which the project and programs are identified. SME support through cluster development programs is provided on two fronts; at first regulations and policy level support and secondly the institutional and networking support.

In the policy level support, problems related to any government department or government policy/regulation are studied and, if found valid, are advocated with the concerned authorities. At the institutional level, SMEDA provides support to SMEs by creating networking amongst the concerned stakeholders or by directly starting development projects in the clusters. Such projects may include establishing a training institute, building a common facility center, building a model plant with state-of-the-art technology for SMEs to emulate through reverse engineering. These projects also include upgrading technology in a particular industrial sector and starting a program-lending scheme for this purpose in collaboration with the financial institutions.

No doubt SMEDA is a great success story among public sector organizations. It has done hundreds and thousands of the interventions to develop SME sector. The past 19 years history of SMEDA has a rich performance record including  a lot of sectoral development strategies coupled with implementation plans, a large number of pre-feasibility studies, business plans, training programs, policy interventions, stakeholders network, consultants data, website and B2B portals, joint ventures with international development agencies, and over two dozens of the common facility centers established across the country under Public Sector Development Program (PSDP).

But SMEDA always remains unable to reply the one question that how many new SMEs have come into existence since inception of SMEDA. Creation of new SMEs is the topmost agenda of SMEDA mandate. To create new SMEs, SMEDA holds series of the training programs on entrepreneurship every year with an equitable spread city-wise and the sector wise. But, it does not know how many of the participants practically were encouraged to become new entrepreneurs. SMEDA has developed over 200 pre-feasibility studies on almost every potential area of SME sector. But it is again blank about the people who became an SME by utilizing a SMEDA developed pre-feasibility study. It does not mean that SMEDA initiatives have gone in vain. Once I came across with a renowned businessman, who told that his famous brand of packed milk was based upon SMEDA feasibility. Similarly, there may be many other projects, which could have emerged on the basis of SMEDA plans. But, SMEDA has no tracking system in place.

SMEDA should develop a foolproof tracking system so as to remain abreast with the outcomes of its initiatives. Simultaneously, the activities as well as services, bearing positive on growth of SMEs should be projected in the media as an integrated media campaign, which is missing in the history of SMEDA due to scarcity of the funds.

SMEDA, having an approach of consultation with SME stakeholders should remain busy round the year in meeting with the trade bodies, besides towing a continued process for industry-academia linkages. SMEDA also needs to attract SMEs for registration or at least for volunteer listings in SMEDA record for services purposes only, apart from being in contact with the SME growth fields like pensioners and overseas Pakistanis.