Staff Reporter :
Some 2,330 small and medium entrepreneurs earned about Tk 43.62 crore and received Tk 72.85 crore orders on the spot during national SME Foundation fairs in the last 10 years.
The demand of SME items increasing both nationally and internationally due to its quality and the entrepreneurs earned total Tk 116.47 crore in the last 10 years.
Against this backdrop, the SME Foundation is going to organize a week-long 11th ‘National Small and Medium Industrial Product Fair’ from May 19 to May 25 in the city’s Bangabandhu International Conference Center.
It is expected that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will inaugurate the week-long fair. Industries Minister Nurul Majid Mahmud Humayun briefed journalists regarding the 11th national SME fair at his ministry on Wednesday.
Over 350 small and medium entrepreneurs are expected to participate at the fair from across the country to showcase their products and take orders, the Minister said.
According to the minister, City Bank is the main sponsor of the 11th National Small and Medium Industrial Products Fair, while Gold Sponsors are jointly United Commercial Bank, BRAC Bank, Mutual Trust Bank, Bank Asia and Lanka Bangla.
Eastern Bank, IDLC Finance and International Labour Organization (ILO) will play as associate organisations.
The fair will be open to visitors from 10:00am to 9:00pm every day between May 19 and 25.
Besides the fair itself, six seminars will be organised on five topics, namely easy financing, women-entrepreneurship, technology, ICT and cluster development for SME entrepreneurs.
This year, seven entrepreneurs will be awarded in each of the four categories-micro, small, medium and start-up.
The participants could showcase and sale their products like food and agro-processing, handicraft, leather, jute, ICT, light engineering, agro-based machineries and plastic products.
More than 350 small and medium industries will participate in this year’s fair, of which about 60 per cent are women entrepreneurs.
Besides, 30 banks, 15 public-private organizations, 5 university business clubs including 50 more entrepreneurial service providers will participate in the fair.
Apart from it, 75 enterprises from readymade garment (RMG) sector will take part this year’s SME fair.
In addition, 42 jute products enterprises, 38 handicrafts, 32 leather products, 27 agricultural processing products, 23 light engineering industry, 14 food products, 13 information technology based services, 12 for SME cluster entrepreneurs from different parts of the country, 5 herbal industry, 5 stalls of jewelery industry, 4 stalls of plastic products, 3 stalls of electrical and electronics sector, 3 stalls of furniture sector and 19 stalls of various government institutions in the fair.
The SME Foundation has been organising the fair since 2012. Cottage, micro, small-and-medium enterprises account for nearly a fourth of Bangladesh’s gross domestic product.
Of the roughly 10 lakh small-and-medium scale businesses and 68 lakh cottage industries in Bangladesh, 7.21 per cent are being run by women.