The Lingering Economic Woes Taking a Toll on SMEs

Small businesses are going through a hard time in this economic crisis situation. At the time of COVID, the Government had taken various benefits and incentives for SMEs. But those steps are yet to be pulled away by entrepreneurs from the pandemic-induced devastation as they are now confronted with this economic crisis, one worse than the other.

The problem that manufacturers are facing right now is floating in business with the rise in prices for raw materials due to the dollar crisis. Besides, they have a hard time getting loans from banks. 

On top of that, due to the increase in the price of gas and electricity, the cost of manufacturing costs have also increased, as entrepreneurs are told in various newspapers. But they are not able to sell their products accordingly.

Again against this dire backdrop, Bangladesh along with the rest of the world celebrated International SME Day 2023 yesterday (27 June,2023).

There are about 78 lakh cottage, micro, small and medium industries in the country according to the SME Foundation. About 2.1 crore manpower are directly and indirectly employed in the SME sector.

According SME foundation, most of the backward linkage industries in the country are small and medium-sized.

The contribution of the industrial sector to the economy of Bangladesh is 37.07% while it is around 28% for the SME sector.

The government has formulated the SME policy, aiming to increase the contribution of the SME sector to 32% by 2024.

SME sector contributes 60% to 70% to the GDP of China, Japan, and South Korea. Bangladesh has a lot of room to increase the potential to increase its contributions to GDP in this sector. And to achieve the target, it is necessary to give special facilities to SME entrepreneurs.