Ahsan asks banks to enhance lending to SMEs for driving up exports

Planning and Development Minister Ahsan Iqbal urged banks on Wednesday to establish an “export development window” offering soft loans primarily to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to double exports under the newly launched five-year economic transformation programme, Uraan Pakistan. The minister emphasised the urgent need to increase exports from $30 billion to $100bn and to drive economic growth to 6 per cent through export expansion. He emphasised the crucial importance of the financial sector in promoting export growth, enhancing agricultural exports, fostering industrial development, and advancing critical areas such as IT, services, mining, workforce export, the blue economy, and innovation. “Pakistan has attempted to take off three times in the past but always has failed due to political instability,” he said while addressing the conference of chiefs of banks organised by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). “We made the first attempt in the 1960s, but the 1965 war derailed it; the second in the 1990s failed due to political instability; and the third, in 2016, was disrupted by the political changes of 2018.”