Growth Potential of Small and Medium Industries in Pakistan

Since independence Pakistan pursued the path of industrialization with objectives of absorbing surplus labour, and bringing about a balanced regional growth . Despite rapid growth of the GDP, employment opportunities have been quite inadequate to absorb the rapidly increasing labour force in Pakistan. Inward-looking policies coupled with fiscal incentives, mostly to the large-scale industries ( Lis ) in the manufacturing sector have resulted into allocation of resources towards the capital- intensive activities and adoption of highly capital – intensive techniques which generated few employment opportunities and aggravated the balance of payments disequilibrium with a heavy dependence on imports. To date there is no explicit policy framework, which exist for small – and medium-sized industries ( SMIs ).