Government is striving hard to resolve energy issue :DPM Ch Pervaiz Elahi

Lahore:Present Government is striving hard to resolve energy issue on priority basis. It was stated by Chaudhry Parvez Ellahi, Deputy Prime Minister of Pakistan today while presiding over 13th Meeting of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) Board of Directors.
The meeting was attended by Agha Nadeem, Additional Secretary Federal Ministry of Industries, Mr. Shafqat-ur-Rehman Ranjha, Joint Secretary Ministry of Finance, Mr. Zulfiqar Thaver, Mr. Abdul Nasir Kasi, Mr. Akram Malik and Mr. Khurram Khan, who conducted the meeting as Acting CEO SMEDA and Executive Secretary to the Board.
Chaudhry Parvez Ellahi, presiding over the meeting as Chairman of the Board, advised SMEDA and Engineering Development Board (EDB) to develop small and medium level power generation projects.

The Deputy Prime Minister agreed to a proposal of developing an institutional mechanism for close coordination between SMEDA, SME Business Support Fund and the SME Bank, who were performing similar functions in different entities. He advised Ministry of Industries to arrange a separate meeting to conclude this proposal into a working mechanism. He was confident that joint collaboration of the three organizations could be highly beneficial for development of SME sector.

Regarding SME development of SMEDA in Quetta, the Deputy Prime Minister advised SMEDA management to expedite the process of filling the vacant post of Provincial Chief in SMEDA Quetta Office.
Reviewing a SMEDA Project for early recovery of small business at union council level, Chaudhry Parvez Elahi observed that the grant being disbursed for this purpose was not sufficient to serve the requirement. He advised SMEDA to increase rate of this grant from Rs.30,000 to Rs.60,000 per SME in next budget.

Earlier, Mr. Khurram Khan, Acting CEO SMEDA and Executive Secretary to the BoD put up the agenda of meeting through a detailed presentation, which included approval of the minutes of 12th BoD meeting, SMEDA’s budget for 2012-13, Annual Accounts of SMEDA for the 2010-11 and a number of the other important matters.