SME financing: issues, challenges and future prospects.

• Author: Kazmi, Shabbir
• Position: Small and medium enterprises

Byline: Shabbir Kazmi

The Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) held the second Coffee@CBER session on 12th October 2019 at Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi. The theme of the forum was "SME Financing: Issues, Challenges and Future Prospects". The forum was attended by policymakers, government and business leaders, and visionaries to discuss the key issues that face the SME sector; especially in meeting their financing needs. This session was a second of a series of round table discussions that CBER will host on different aspects of the Pakistan's economy.

Panelists included G. M. Abbasi, Director Infrastructure, Housing and SME Finance Department and Director Islamic Banking Department at State Bank of Pakistan (SBP); Aamir Shamim, Head, Treasury and Financial Institutions at BankIslami Pakistan; Mehboob-ul-Haq Memon, Managing Director, Sindh Enterprise Development Fund (SEDF) and Ahmed Ali Siddiqui, Senior Executive Vice President and Head, Product Development and Shariah Compliance (PDSC) at Meezan Bank. The session was moderated by Dr. Farrukh Iqbal, Executive Director Institute of Business Administration (IBA).

The discussion was in response to the State Bank of Pakistan target is to enhance SME sector credit to 17% (currently 8.7%) and increase the number of SME borrowers to 700,000 clients by 2023. Financing to SMEs by local banks and Development Financial Institutes (DFIs) was reported at Rs513 billion as of end December 2018, with total number of SME borrowers at 180,704, out of the estimated total operational 4.5 million SMEs.

Dr. Farrukh Iqbal initiated the discussion by...