SME Foundation (SMEF) has initiated a move to redefine small and medium enterprises (SME) for bringing uniformity in the definition used by all concerned for providing best possible benefits to the potential sector.
The foundation officials sat with the stakeholders at its conference room on Thursday to get their recommendations for developing a time-befitting and acceptable definition of SME.
It has been observed that the definition of SME of one agency differs from another, creating obstruction to reach the targeted groups.
SMEF Managing Director (MD) Md Safiqul Islam moderated the dialogue, where General Manager Mohammad Nazeem Hassan Sattar and Manager Akhil Ranjan Tarafder presented a paper analyzing Asian perspectives on the issue.
Additional Secretary of Ministry of Industries Enamul Haq, Professor of Economics Department of Dhaka University Dr Momtaz Uddin Ahmed, Professor of Marketing Department Dr Razia Begum, and Director General of BIBM Dr Toufic Ahmad Choudhury, among others, spoke on the occasion.
Representatives of different ministries, business associations and banking sector shared their views in the dialogue.
The speakers also recommended bringing uniformity in defining SME, and said the fund created for SME sector could not reach the targeted group due to change in its definition from time to time on the basis of employment and investment threshold.
The SMEF MD said many SME could not sustain in the country due to not getting their due benefits for illogically changing the definition by different agencies concerned.
He also said the developing countries revise their definition of SME based on respective inflation and economy.
The speakers recommended forming a core committee under SMEF to develop a well-accepted definition incorporating the cottage, micro, small and medium enterprises, for ensuring due services for different potential sectors and their graduation.
The SMEF GM, showing secondary data on cottage, micro, small, medium and large enterprises, said the definitions have created a gap in the number of cottage industry in the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) data.
Due to definition, 87 per cent of SME are included as cottage industry, he also said.
India shows 95 per cent of its industry as micro enterprise, Sri Lanka 92 per cent and Malaysia 76 per cent, whereas only 1.33 per cent industry in Bangladesh belongs to micro level.
Bangladesh had no official definition of SME till 1986, but later it has been defined with the number of employment creation and size of investment etc. The latest definition by the government in 2016 included the garment industries as medium enterprises, creating mismatch in many economic indicators.
smunima@yahoo.com