Provincial chief, Small and Medium Enterprise Development Authority (Smeda), Javed Iqbal Khattak, is working on the preparation of five-year development plan for three potential sectors of mineral, horticulture and tourism of the province. Talking to Business Recorder, he said that the development plan is being prepared in consultations with the stakeholders and would be shared with the provincial government.
He said that in mineral sector, the authority is focusing on four different minerals including marble, chromites, gypsum and coal. On the other hand, he said the authority is also increasing focus on educated youth, particularly the graduate of vocational institutions to refine their ideas and take them towards commercialisation and convert it into a proper form of business.
In this connection, he said the authority would cooperate with provincial government to extend financial assistance to the upcoming cohort of the professional educational institutions and provide opportunity for the people in
Furthermore, the provincial chief Smeda said the authority will also extend co-operation to provincial government in initiating measures aimed at accelerating economic development of the province and mobilise investment and generate employment opportunities for the people of the region.
In horticulture sector, he said they will work for bringing improvement in the post harvesting mechanism and will propose measures for minimising the wastage promote value-addition and increase production. He said that post harvesting mechanism even do not exist in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, adding its promotion will open new avenues of investment and minimising wastage at field level.
He said that a five-year development plan for tourism is ready and will work on it along with the department of tourism Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to promote tourism in the province. In this connection, he said the data of hotels would be put on the website.
In mineral sectors, they will pay attention to machinery up-gradation and utilisation of modern machinery to improve the quality of the product. Furthermore, Javed Khattak said that work on different products of technology up-gradation in various sectors and a program of the revival of SMEs in the province is also in progress.
The authority, he said has also focused on the promotion of women entrepreneurship in the province and facilitation in three different categories including the capacity building of existing entrepreneurs, university level graduates and young entrepreneurs to work on the students of the level of secondary school and higher secondary school level so after completion of education they could not only begin their own businesses, but also generate employment opportunities for others. The increase in the role of women in the economic development of the province, he said will bear good results.
