PESHAWAR - The project of 'Economic Revitalisation of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA' (ERKF) funded by Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) under the auspices of World Bank (WB) has been launched.
This was stated by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA), Yousaf Naseem Khokhar.
He said that the authority has started meeting the cluster representatives through relevant associations for executing the SME development component.
General Manager Outreach SMEDA Head Office Lahore, Provincial Chief SMEDA KP Peshawar and Project Manager EKRF briefed the stakeholders at Swat wherein cluster players and the representatives of associations were present.
The EKRF project is a joint initiative for Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA Secretariat and will cater to the economic rehabilitation needs resulting from the militancy crisis as identified for this region under the recently completed Post Crisis Needs Assessment (PCNA).
The proposed project will help in the revitalization of the private sector in the crisis-affected regions through direct support for the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), attracting investments from the diaspora, and institutional capacity building including regulatory reforms.
The project is funded under MDTF grant of $20 million and will be executed by the World Bank through SMEDA, the Department of Industries, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA Secretariat.
The CEO SMEDA further said that the SME Development component of the project has an allocation of $14 million with a share of $ 9.1 million and $ 4.9 million for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA respectively.
The SME Development component will be implemented by SMEDA and spadework for this challenging activity has already been started.
There are three subcomponents of the grant program that are rehabilitation, up-gradation supports and capacity building & business development.
The rehabilitation component will provide direct support to the affected SMEs in the form of matching grants to the eligible enterprises, which may be used as working capital for reconstruction of basic infrastructure and acquiring, repairing machinery and equipment etc.
The subcomponent of the up-gradation will support the up-gradation of SMEs for improving business productivity and efficiency. Matching grants to eligible individual SMEs for project, as well as group of SMEs for cluster development programs will be provided. These grants could be used for technological innovation, products development, adopting new packaging/labeling requirements, establishing common facility centres (CFCs) etc. Funds may be used for both capital investment and working capital.
The sub-component of capacity building and business development will support capacity building of SMEs in partnership with the Business Edge Program of International Finance Corporation (IFC) and through procurement of business development services (BDS) required by the SMEs.