A Reasoned Approach to Letting SMEs Count
Executive Summary
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have historically been one staple of the enterprise landscape within economies globally. Especially growth with clear benefits for poverty reduction puts a premium on integrating, productively and profitably, small and medium enterprises in the very process of economic growth. The over-riding vision must be for setting up a market-based economic order with a level playing field for all enterprises, in which SMEs can aspire to opportunities of growth and wealth-creation commensurate with their own endowments and diligence, innovation and management commitment. In addition, the vision must lead to a priority in the delivery of government services so as to neutralize, on a continuing basis, the handicaps and irritants which, almost reflexively, tend to spring themselves upon SMEs in a selective manner. A historically accelerated pace of trade liberalization in Bangladesh since the early 1990s by spurring a veritable deluge of imports has quite significantly increased competitive pressures on SMEs in Bangladesh. Rapidly falling cost of communications have by unifying global markets heightened the intensity of competition. Trading is widely seen as a safer, richer, smarter and bulkier career to have than manufacturing---bad news indeed for industrialization. It is against this background that the Government of Bangladesh constituted the Taskforce on Small & Medium Scale Industries late in 2003. This report is the harvest of the effort of that Taskforce.
2.0 In essence, the Taskforce’s cardinal goals are the following:
To formulate a framework of policy formation to achieve development of SMEs with an accent on poverty reduction, as also a relatively broad plan of actions, just shy of a more detailed suite of specific action programmes with corresponding actors and time-lines to match; To recommend a set of SME-development Policy for To redefine the small and medium enterprises---both of manufacturing and non-manufacturing types---for the purposes of the practice of SME development policies. At the same time, to formulate criteria of enterprise eligibility to the assistance package. To prescribe, on some well-agreed rational bases, a number of booster industries with a sizeable proportion of SMEs which then to create a package, comprising at once of major financial-assistance, fiscal rationalization and some capacity-building programmes for. Wherever appropriate, priority will be accorded for entrepreneurs from social categories that have been crowded out during liberalization (such as jolha, telli, sonar, etc), small enterprises and entrepreneurial activities by women; To produce a self-contained set of implementation guidelines for the Taskforce’s prescriptions to have lasting value, recognizing that guidelines are not the same thing as specific implementation execution; In view of the rapid structural change in the world economy, especially in favor of increasingly weightless, paperless, knowledge-rich industries and services, to see structural change as among major imperatives for intervention by government and the civil society that are supposed to have an advantage on informed strategic planning that private investors probably lack. Proven or demonstrable market failures or policy failures, the playing field being uneven, or increasing returns to scale or imperatives for structural transformation were accepted as important rationale for public intervention (through implementation of the Taskforce’s recommendations). The Taskforce adopted an SME-only approach towards the capture of priority actions to impact selectively upon the competitive handicaps of the SMEs.
3.0 Taskforce’s major findings
3.1 Development of SMEs is increasingly being held at the highest echelons of policy-making globally as a permanent and integral part of poverty-reduction strategy of developing country governments. Success here will require acting decisively in terms of making SMEs’ scarce financial resources go further, and harnessing, up to the hilt, human resource and institutional capacities of the stakeholders in SME development.
3.2 The archetypal small-ticket manufacturers, often closely associated with occupational categories with a social accent, such as jolhas, tellis, sonars, kamars, have been crowded by middle-class elites, and this denial and the associated divide calls for a correction through proactive interventions.
3.3 With liberalization apace, withering competition from more entrenched countries and globally-branded companies operating on a global scale, and with deviations from the rule of cascading in the setting of border tariffs, trading has become a career of choice in Bangladesh
3.4 There are systematic handicaps which choke the SMEs’ entrepreneurial drive or put a crimp on their choices, and thus drag their net performance, versus their competitors’---thus justifying prescriptions which selectively impact SMEs in an effort to alleviate, if not remove altogether, such handicaps.
3.5 In an age of sweeping globalization, and growing penetration of information and knowledge technologies into the emerging international division of labor, appropriately positioning Bangladesh’s SMEs in the resulting structural transformation of the global economy is seen as an important basis for both selecting the booster industries as well as the enterprises deserving injection of public assistance that benefit them.
3.6While governments often perform poorly in production, they have (or at any rate can potentially acquire at low cost) an innate advantage in terms of acquisition, dissemination and maintenance of a base of information and knowledge of a kind that enhances productivity of private investors’ business decisions in an inclusive manner. In addition, governments by virtue of its vastly superior catalytic or mobilizational potential have ameliorative role(s) to play when either markets fail, or externalities skew private investors response in sub-optimal ways or when venture-capital is in too short a supply for the nation’s good in high-risk-high-gain investment opportunities. In such cases, there is a well-grounded rationale for public intervention, including a provider of equity capital, a practice in which a modest beginning has already been made in Bangladesh
4.0 Lessons from international experience versus SME development
4.1 The Taskforce has been benefited from the assimilation of several major lessons from recently-concluded Istanbul
4.2 Several of the most important lessons are as follows:
Because a considerable extent of strategic stewardship and gap-filling---with the gaps in question not being visible to the private decision-makers--- is typically required in this kind of structural transformation, a three-way set-up, involving the government, civil society and the private sector, is typically required. Only the government can be entrusted the central role of the architect of the change management, with the provision that it will formulate a broad plan of actions and then a much more detailed action programmes in the interest of execution. Government and civil society institutions in question typically also needs technical assistance and capacity building so as to attain maximum cost-effectiveness. That is why such improvement in the competitiveness of SMEs versus large enterprises typically requires a modification of the structure of public investment in desired directions. The policy and institutional-delivery set created for the development and empowering of the SMEs should be promotional, catalytic, incubatory and selective, and should not involve indiscriminate subsidies. To the extent that removal of specific market failure or previous government failure or negative pecuniary externality puts a premium on the creation of a package of financial incentives, then perhaps a small quantity of subsidies may also be justified. There is precedent in Asia of well-directed government intervention in a coherent package of ameliorative and stimulative action, including of channelizing strategically-focussed and small dose of financial subsidies, in the interest of fostering the growth of SMEs. Perhaps, a similar case can be made for SME development in Bangladesh
4.3 It is important to foster the evolution of a congenial, transparent and simplified regulatory framework that keeps low the compliance costs of an enabling environment for SMEs, and especially small enterprises. By avoiding invasive procedures (such as rent-seeking behavior, etc) and keeping cost of compliance low, many countries have integrated informal-sector enterprises in mainstream SME development.
4.4 It is very important to know what the elements of SME policy are. The main ones require that: (i) the government accords to SME development an integral and vigorous role in the overall management of growth and poverty-reduction; (ii) identify and establish the network of infrastructure and institutional delivery mechanisms that facilitate the promotion of SMEs; (iii) especially existing regulatory framework and government support institutions be re-oriented towards bolstering the goals of SME policy; (iv) nurture and partner civil-society institution(s) having credible management teams in terms of the delivery of needed services, leadership, initiation, counseling, mentoring and tutoring; etc
4.5 Create innovative but meritocratic arrangements so that deserving and especially small enterprises with desired entrepreneurial antecedents and promise can be offered financial incentives within industries prescribed on some well-agreed bases.
4.6 Dispute settlement procedures should proactively shield small enterprises especially from high legal costs and insidious harassment.
4.7 In order to assist small enterprises in dealing with their pervasive lack of access to finance, avenues of mobilizing debt without collaterals to match (either using debt-guarantee schemes or mapping intellectual-property capital into pseudo-venture capital) must be urgently created.
4.8 There is a need to systematically accord precedence to small enterprises versus medium enterprises, within the limitations of government’s resources.
4.9 Governments are increasingly harnessing information & communications technologies, IP-based infrastructure, and electronic-governance in an effort to parlay regulatory services, all kinds of useful information and mentoring inputs, with an accent on increasing the viability of SMEs in all sectors of the economy.
Taskforce’s Recommendations by way of Policies & Institutions, Implementation Guidelines
5. Identification of booster Sectors
The following industries, including one based exclusively on the imperative to foster women entrepreneurship, are prescibed by the Taskforce for preference in terms of prospective public assistance and capacity-building programmes, within the limitation of a review every three years:
Electronics and electricals; Software-development; Light engineering and metal-working; Agro-processing/agri-business/plantation agriculture/ specialist farming/tissue-culture; Leather-making and leather goods ; Knitwear and ready-made garments; Plastics and other synthetics; Healthcare & diagnostics; Educational services; Pharmaceuticals/cosmetics/toiletries; Designer, aesthetically-challenging, personal wear and effects;Notwithstanding the prescriptive nature of the foregoing recommendation, non-classification as such should not disqualify an SME from financial assistance from any scheduled banks.
The Taskforce has organized its additional recommendations in three groups in order of their underlying time-horizons: short-, medium- and long-term. By short term, we mean actions whose impact may be felt between now and 18 months away. By medium term, we mean actions whose initiation could itself take up to 18 months, whose fruition could well take take between 18 month and 4 years. Long-term is defined as something that takes more than 4 years to fructify.
Short-term Policies
6.1 Framing and carrying out policies for SME development
6.1.1 An unambiguous policy statement declaring that the Government consider SMEs, especially small enterprises, as an integral and important element in the cause of economic growth and poverty alleviation in Bangladesh
6.1.2 An SME Advisory Panel be constituted to perform the services of a specialist brain-trust for the Ministry of Industries (MOI). Likewise, an SME Cell is set up in MOI to help implement the SME policies.
6.1.3 A roadmap and a tactical plan of action, to be conceived and then detailed by SME Advisory Panel and the SME Cell.
The Panel may comprise a few of the members of this Taskforce, other subject-matter specialists representative of the booster industries themselves, one or two certifiable role models of mass awareness-raising to generate mass interest in technepreneurial careers. In the medium term, the Advisory Panel and the SME Cell will eventually morph into what we call a SME Foundation (this is further detailed under the rubric of medium-term recommendations of the Taskforce).
The Panel will report to the Minister of Industries. The tactical plan of action is about what it will take to move SMEs forward the way they should.
6.2 Identification of SMEs
6.2.1 Defining enterprises for targeting purposes in terms of either fixed investment or head-count is an well-established policy practice, for instance in India. A one-attribute definition typically reduces the proportion of indeterminate cases compared with a two-attribute one. Any definition, no matter how well-thought-through is bound to involve some degree of arbitrariness.
6.2.2 For manufacturing industries, the Taskforce recommends that: an enterprise should be treated as small if, in today’s market prices, the replacement cost of plant, machinery and other parts/components, fixtures, support utility, and associated technical services by way of capitalized costs (of turn-key consultancy services, for example), etc, were to up to Tk. 15 million;
an enterprise would be treated as medium if, in today’s market prices, the replacement cost of plant, machinery, and other parts/components, fixtures, support utility, and associated technical services (such as turn-key consultancy), etc, were to up to Tk. 100 million;
from both definitions above, land is excluded.
6.2.3 For non-manufacturing activities (such as trading or other services), the Taskforce
defines:
an enterprise should be treated as small if it has less than 25 workers, in full-time equivalents;
an enterprise would be treated as medium if it has between 25 and 100 employees;
From both definitions above, land and structures, once again, are excluded.
6.2.4 By making the definition especially of small enterprises more inclusive with a lower threshold for assistance eligibility, the outreach of SME policy for poverty alleviation and employment generation has been augmented versus all past statements of industrial policies.
6.2.5 Our proposed definition sets the threshold smallness at a much lower level compared with the treatment in the existing Industrial Policy of Bangladesh. The Taskforce recognizes that there will remain a need for National Board of Revenue (NBR) and other implementation arms of the government to incorporate the definitions in the declared SME policy within their own operating environment.
6.3 Setting criteria for deserving enterprises
6.3.1 Enterprises which, as well as meeting the size requirement proposed by the Taskforce, must have (i) proven credentials as an entrepreneur (for example, membership in well-recognized social occupational groupings) with requisite presence and facilities on the ground; (ii) an above-average insiders’ equity participation; (iii) certifiable professional specialization of top-management in relevant production skills; (iv) the stamp of approval from globally-recognized quality-assurance bodies (ISO 9001:2000, for example); (v) high management commitment to innovation. Women entrepreneurs will be accorded preference, wherever appropriate.
6.4 Rationalization of VAT and other budgetary measures
6.4.1 We recommend that very small manufacturing enterprises with fixed investment of up to Tk. 3 million (three million), should be completely exempt from any obligation to pay VAT. For manufacturing enterprises with fixed investment greater than Tk. 3 million and less than Tk. 15 million, the corresponding turnover tax will be 2.5% (two and a half percent).
6.4.2 We recommend that such very small enterprises (with up to Tk. 3 million in fixed assets not counting land and building) should be given a tax holiday for 7 (seven) and 10 (ten) years from their initiation, for enterprises in the cities of Dhaka/Chittagong and all other areas/locations respectively. Both recommendations will, we propose, be applied in all industries, not just the boosters.
6.4.3 Small industries in technologically-nuanced industries take substantial degrees of risk in new products through R&D. They crucially assist in developing technology base of Bangladesh
Exceptions:
6.4.4 The above two facilities will not be given to : i) Joint Venture industries with foreign partners, ii) Sectors that should be discouraged based on health, environment, or other grounds such as Tobacco, liquor and narcotics related industries.
6.5 Two blanket clauses to protect local industries from irrational tax policies
6.4.5 The total incidence of all taxes at import (Import duty, Supplementary Duty, Regulatory Duty, Development surcharge, VAT, etc.) on the raw materials and spares of locally produced commodities cannot exceed that on corresponding finished imported commodities. If such taxes for a finished commodity are reduced at any time, then the taxes on the raw materials and spares of that product will automatically stand adjusted following the above principle.
6.4.6 VAT on imported products shall not be less than that on like domestic products. Any reduction in existing VAT on imported products shall be automatically matched by an equal reduction on VAT on like domestic products.
7.0 Levelling the playing-field in credit and venture-capital markets
7.1.1 A credit-distribution package will need to be worked out by the Ministry of Industries. An innovative scheme---rather like a two-stage screening mechanism---that can really probe for the bone fide of the applicants as entrepreneur materiale will be deployed. Donor financial resources made available specifically to help with implementation of SME policy being enunciated here would only be allocated to competitively-selected enterprises within the booster industries here being prescribed. Of the total resources available, no more than 20% may be earmarked for medium enterprises, while the remainder, 80%, will be earmarked for small enterprises. Within each division, the resources will be divided up into a public-sector venture-capital fund (10%), approximately on the lines of the currently-implemented EEF at the Bangladesh Bank. The remainder will be allocated to a credit fund. (This does not have anything to do with debt-equity ratio relevant in discussions of enterprise financing.) In the short run, the distribution of the credit fund and venture-capital fund will be the task of the BASIC Bank, which is here being recommended as the lead bank, it being borne in mind that BASIC Bank will closely work with the Advisory Panel. (Over the medium term, this responsibility will devolve to the SME Foundation.) The Ministry of Industry and the SME panel/Foundation, as the case may be, will determine modalities of how to implement both the credit-fund and the venture-capital fund. Projects to be funded from the venture-capital fund will be evaluated by a team of experts---a handful of subject-matter specialists---which will be constituted as a part of the implementation of SME Policy.
7.1.2 A publicly-mandated venture-capital scheme be created in deference to the rationale cited in the main text. It will also give a stimulus to the morale of entrepreneurs who commit in-house capital to projects with novel and potentially innovative processes and technologies with demonstrable potential for commercial success. Such projects have a-typically high risk and high returns. This recommendation is rationalized in terms of the private under-investment based on extensive, even potentially crippling, negative pecuniary externalities in certain among the booster industries prescribed here, with regard to the leaching of shareholder’s value outward from the enterprise.
7.1.3 The Advisory Panel working together with the Lead Bank in the short-term, and the SME Foundation in the medium- and long-term, would implement a transparent and meritocratic arrangement for steering public equity and debt resources into a genuinely deserving selection of enterprises. The development of human resources in both the BASIC Bank and the SME Foundation with regard to effective targeting of resources made available under public equity funding would remain imperative.
8.0 SMEs need for quality-assurance (QA) stamp-of-approval
8.1.1 Bangladesh Starndards and Trademark Institute (BSTI) with its accountability to SMEs fundamentally enhanced through appropriate SME representation in its governance might become the focal point for offering assistance with regards to securing quality-assurance (QA) certification from registrars of QA. Such association(s) would be eligible to grants from Government towards the cost of setting up testing laboratories.
8.1.2 Small, out-right co-financing grants may be available for registration with globally branded QA registrars (say with ISO 9001:2001 or equivalent).
9.0 The urgent need for a major overhaul of the availability of reliable and current data about the characteristics of SMEs
9.1.1 The Taskforce recommends that the Ministry of Industries immediately take up the conception and implementation of a multi-stage sample survey of SMEs in the metros and the district headquarters. Ideally, there should be a complete enumeration of all SMEs, the data from which should be of use in drawing up a survey methodology for a systematic stratified random sampling.
Medium-term Policies
The OECD have recently opined that one of the major challenges of transitional and developing countries in this age of sweeping globalization is to ensure rapid development of the SME sector by harnessing scarce human and institutional capacities in availing of trading and investment opportunities. In consonance with this imperative, the Taskforce puts forward a package of medium-term recommendations.
10.0 The formation of a small and medium enterprises (SME) Foundation
10.1.1 Over the medium term and beyond, the Government must remove all remaining obstacles impeding the formation of an SME Foundation as a pivotal platform for the delivery of all planning, developmental, financing, awareness-raising, evaluation and advocacy services in the name of all SME development as a crucially-important element of poverty alleviation. This should be a PKSF-like foundation
10.1.2 The Foundation would, it is recommended, strive to ensure the provisioning of one-window delivery of all legal, administrative and regulatory facilities for SMEs in Bangladesh
11.0 A tactical plan of action that leads to enabling environment
11.1.1 The tactical plan is needed to move from gap analyses to skills upgrading based on the product(s) in the booster-sectors identified in this report, paying careful attention to the requirements of the production clusters in the inner cities (such as Dholai Khal, Mirpur,and the like).
11.1.2 An enabling environment in which both extant and aspiring entrepreneurs find within an easy reach most of what they direly need---information, counseling, mentoring, access to finance, technology and the means to market.
11.1.3 A serious effort is recommended for fostering a supply chain for technepreneurship. Bangladesh
11.1.4 An online-community, availing of relevant information and communications technologies, of both extant and aspiring SME entrepreneurs, to be hosted on a SME Web portal in the SME Cell/SME Foundation, for the divining of technology, product and market trends, for career-counseling to benefit science/technology graduates, for technepreneurial problem-solving session(s), for mentoring using guru-disciple symbiosis. (The Taskforce is fully aware that pulling off such innovation would require careful planning and nearly flawless execution).
11.1.5 A Web-based virtual front-office providing all start-up assistance to SME entrepreneurs (application forms, FAQs, limited directory-assistance, success stories, horror stories, etc): an one-stop-service, with all interactions between the user and the system stored on databases in the interest of providing institutional memory.
11.1.6 Information regarding standards of labor and output pertaining to overseas markets to benefit export-oriented SMEs should be put on the Web portal.
11.1.7 Such structures of electronic-governance should be supplemented, at least for a time, by human touch, with adequate budget to match, to physically attend to the needs of small entrepreneurs who take recourse to them. This is based on the recognition that a totally hands-off delivery of all requisite services to SMEs is an ideal whose achievement was likely to only happen in stages.
11.1.8 A high-performance fiber-optics communications backbone be put in place in six of the country’s largest metro-markets (namely, Dhaka , Chittagong Khulna Barisal
11.1.9 Technology-exchange programmes between countries with similar stages of development, and with a similar maturity of the infrastructural development for SME development, in the interest of rapid technology transfer.
12.0 Formulation of a package of capacity-building and training
12.1.1 Specialized professional expertise in carefully-chosen niches that the Panel of Advisors recommends has potential for a broad-based replication. Such training can be so packaged to such high standards that the recipients feel motivated to pay up user charges, however minimal.
12.1.2 Re-skilling boot camps would need to be organized for each of the booster industries by rotation, with a view to provide periodic technology grounding in efficacious skills among workers in SMEs.
12.1.3 (a) BSCIC/SCITI, BIM, and BITAC---where a lot of equipment, infrastructure and other resources are in place---should undergo a significant strategic reorientation of their own core competencies under the watchful eye of the Advisory Panel/SME Cell. In particular, the skills and competencies needed to enable SME hold their own in the booster-industries in the changed global business environment should be re-emphasized in the ensuing revamping of these institutions.
(b) Towards this end, technical assistance and investment are both urgently needed to appropriately accent the training and motivational in these institutions so that they can become durable fixtures of technical and managerial skills can be nurtured, in a format of public-private partnership.
12.1.4 The selection of such training courses and then the delivery of such training is an important instance of public-private collaboration.
12.1.5 R & D that lead to prototypes with a scope for replication in potentially high-impact product niches (eg in the field of mobile games, 3-D animation, or bio-optics, or the manufacture of computer-controlled industrial and medical appliances, or spurring the use of resin in new production applications, etc);
12.1.6 Curriculum of vocational training institutes be revised and reviewed to make it SME
development friendly.
13.0 Evolving of an SME eco-system: Issues of Institutional Delivery Chains
Two kinds of institutions are recommended, preferably for adoption by civil society role models/ catalysts, bearing in mind that these institutions will not be in the employ of the government.
13.1.1 The mission of the first kind is in trying to render stakeholders out of indigenous
young science and technology graduates by bringing to their agenda for poverty alleviation the currently-missing fulcrum of technological innovations to improve the quality of life of the poor in Bangladesh
13.1 .2 The mission of the second is to achieve mastery over a rapidly-changing slate of
IT skills, and to then quickly disseminate them among young self-starters, including in the university/polytechnic/colleges’ stream, through a regime of online and “brick-and-mortar” interactions.
13.1.3 Efforts to accelerate the retention and promotion of women entrepreneurs should be
strengthened.
13.1.4 Greater stakeholder involvement in the entire gamut of activities by way of SME
development while maximizing the extent of ownership to be promoted.
14.0 Mitigating Impediments in clusters
14.1.1 One should make an effort to identify three or four promising lines of production in a handful of clusters in the metros of Dhaka and Chittagong
Long-term policies
15.0 Education and Generational Ethos
15.1.1 Bangladesh
15.1.2 Content of a kind that seeds, early on in the global-view of the children, the
attractiveness of entrepreneurial careers should be pressed into service.
15.1.3 Similarly, the accent on mathematics, science and technology fare should be made
stronger in the educational curricula of schools and colleges in Bangladesh
15.1.4 A census of all small and medium enterprises in Bangladesh
This is likely to require a very large investment.
15.1.5 The legal and contractual framework prevailing in Bangladesh
especially small enterprises’ handicaps. A survey of SMEs should be launched in order to identify these insidious legal irritants. These should then be systematically weaned from the world of Bangladeshi SMEs.
15.1.6 A small-claims court needs to be instituted, with requisite resources and mandate to
match.
Section I
Introduction
What follows is the first draft of a report of the Small and Medium Enterprises Taskforce: it includes the outputs from various companion efforts in the appendices. While borrowing selectively from those companion output, the draft of this report has made an effort within merely a two-week time-period to round out a theoretically self-contained, sectorally well-targeted, and articulated prescriptions for the policy-maker.
The members of the drafting sub-committee are acutely aware that, while they have actively sought to give space to as many of the relevant threads of both analyses, discussions and recommendations from the companion output, they may have occasionally failed to capture each item that was important. The drafting sub-committee however feels that by including all of that valuable companion output in the body of the overall report of the taskforce, albeit in the appendices, the reader has not been denied of the fruits of that fertile labour.
The report is structured as follows: The main report is broken into three further subsections. Section II essentially makes the point that in the wake of fairly accelerated trade liberalization, and the growing ascendancy of both China India Bangladesh Bangladesh
There are five appendices to the report. Appendix-1 presents a detailed presentation of the criteria for sectoral targeting. Appendix-2 presents the entire report produced by the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, titled. Appendix-3 presents the entire body of the recommendations that arose from the Workshop held on January 23, 2004 . Appendix-4 presents the body of the report produced by the Bureau of Economic Research, Dhaka University
Section II
SMEs in manufacturing: Trade liberalization and competitive landscape
Has this great effort yielded commensurate gains in terms of growth rates? The growth rates---of the GNP, the manufacturing value added and trading sectors in the Bangladesh economy for four overlapping quinquennial periods beginning from 1976/77 up to 2003--- shows no evidence at all of a significant quickening of the rate of economic growth in any of the three growth indicators: Whereas, the differential between the rates of border taxation between the two period is highly significant. The clear implication is that trade liberalization is a necessary but no means sufficient condition of a significant acceleration of growth rate of any given developing country.
This is not the place for a fully-blown analysis of Bangladesh
It is in this context that the recent policy interest in the SMEs has to be seen. In country after country, leaders have come to the conclusion that while accelerated trade liberalization is a necessary condition for creating an enabling environment for the broad-based growth of the manufacturing industries, the small and medium enterprises will require well-targeted assistance package, especially in terms of credit availability, skilling-up and mentoring on how to make most of the opportunities that an outward-looking regime of trade and industrial policies can unleash. This recognition has been instrumental in spawning in the recent times an urgent and sustained interest in the SMEs as building blocks of adjusting to the radically different market and policy scenarios in the post-liberalization era in Bangladesh.
It can’t of course be gainsaid that rapid trade liberalization has a knack for providing globally companies or globally-branded countries (such as China India Bangladesh
While liberalization may well have created opportunities for gainful growth through trade on the demand side, such gains, going forward, must be seen as counterbalanced by formidable challenges on the supply side. First, competition has become increasingly fierce among the global and regional economies and enterprises, SMEs included. There are also many more producers competing for both existing and new markets and market segments for goods, services, finance and other wealth-creating technologies and knowledge. The competitive strength of China China Asia , particularly those suppliers (including SMEs) at lower stages of technology sophistication and relying on a high import content. At the same time, the fairly meteoric ascendancy of India since the turn of the century as a magnet for direct foreign investment (DFI), and the outsourcing of much design and development work from the OECD countries in industries as diverse from movie-editing to chip-design, is a sign, increasingly ominousness for competitiveness, of the present times.
Second, consumer preferences and market standards have become more sophisticated and exacting. Competitive advantage is now determined by several non-price parameters such as quality, health and safety, social equity in employment and production, and ecological compatibility of products and processes. Furthermore, market demand is constantly changing, a trend facilitated not least by the rapid advances in ICT, bio-engineering and new materials. In consequence, there are more frequent introductions of new products and processes, faster and more innovative design changes, shorter product cycles and smaller output batches, higher quality and greater mass customization, more just-in-time sourcing and greater punctuality in delivery. This is the context in which we are having to draw up a strategy for reviving the flagging SME sector in Bangladesh
The goals before the SME Taskforce
In essence, the Taskforce’s cardinal goals are the following:
To recommend to the Government a body of what can be called SME Policy in Industrialization for To redefine the criteria of eligibility to the assistance package in terms of size of the enterprises; To identify, on some well-agreed rational bases, a number of industries with a sizeable proportion of SMEs which then to create an assistance-package for; To produce a fairly self-contained set of implementation guidelines for the Taskforce’s prescriptions to have lasting value; In view of the rapid structural change in the world economy, especially in favor of increasingly weightless, paperless, knowledge-rich industries and services, to see structural change and remaining relevant as major imperatives for intervention by government and the civil society. The Approach taken in this Report
A good deal of thinking and writing have taken place, especially since this Taskforce was formed in November 2003, on how to spur the growth of SMEs in Bangladesh
Having said that, it is imperative that we make it frankly clear that we have taken the liberty, whenever appropriate, to employ a different methodology formulating the vital question(s) of real interest. More specifically, we have chosen to adopt a slightly more focused, perhaps more specific, approach to what is action-able within the admittedly limited financial and implementation resources of the government. The distinguishing feature of our methodology has been a constant concern with externally-induced constraints that affects, or are likely to affect, SMEs only but not others.
This “SMEs-only” global-view leads to side-tracking or totally omitting issues of a kind that affects alike both SMEs and large enterprises, for example. Given that the government is in any case likely to be starved of financial and managerial resources, the SMEs-only vantage-point appears to us to be more appropriate, both tactically and logistically.
We take pains in pointing out throughout where some of the other esteemed contributors, by using a more general approach, have been led to propound a significantly more expansive, more diffuse and less tractable package of assistance interventions for SMEs, compared with the one that we have put forward.
Let us give an example of what we have in mind here. The BEI writes: “Second, the government should be focused on creating an enabling environment comprised of sound macroeconomic and structural policies, good infrastructure, fair policy of competition, and efficiently functioning institutions (italics added). Economic policies should focus on creating a transparent and accountable legal and regulatory framework, a policy to improve quality and transportation system.” These policies will, if they are effectively implemented, increase the productivity, across-the-board, for all sizes of enterprises. How can they alleviate the competitive deficit of the SMEs versus large enterprises? An SME-only approach leads us to a more focused set of actions, with a more direct impact-route for SMEs’ constraints, is likely to address them in a clear and quantifiable manner.
The Role of SMEs in the National Economy of Bangladesh
According to UNESCAP, SMEs account for upwards of 90% of all firms in East and South-East Asia , as well as in Japan
In Bangladesh
The manufacturing industry essentially comprises small and medium scale enterprises: by some accounts, 60% and 25%, respectively, of the workforce in manufacturing happen to be hired by small and medium enterprises. It is hardly an overstatement to say that small and medium enterprises are pretty much synonymous with manufacturing industry.
The scope of the work of this Task Force is about small and medium-sized enterprises in manufacturing industries or in trading or service-based ventures.
The SME Taskforce puts forward a well-structured approach to the problem of identifying booster sectors, and “eligible” enterprises within them. The essential elements in such a structure are
(a) a vision; (b) the objectives; and finally (c) the methods. With this, we now turn to the vision that has inspired the Taskforce.
Vision
The Taskforce believe that it was handed down a rare opportunity to make a difference, going forward, to the lot of SMEs in this country, draw up a tactical plan of action and finally a set of implementation details so as to spur small enterprises in a number of target industries. The period of the incumbency of this Taskforce has been one of thinking clearly about the vision and road-map for the development of SMEs. The vision guiding our work has included:
That legitimately promoting SMEs---or, at the very least, keeping SMEs, especially the small enterprises out-of-harm’s-way from the fierce competition powered by the large, formidably-branded, often multi-national, firms---would be widely accepted as an essential tenet of industrial policy of Bangladesh. Only up to 20% of the budgetary allocation allocated to SMEs must be earmarked for the medium-sized enterprises. Stake-holders of small and medium-scale enterprises shall run their business on a level playing field as regards the provisioning and pricing of each of the seven make-or-break inputs for any enterprise to compete, namely, equity capital; debt finance; technical skills; management skills; marketing know-how; gainful information, especially updates about market prices and about technical-substitution possibilities; and capacity for continuous innovation. Such stakeholders on the other hand must also be ready for any change-management that survival may dictate or agility may require; have a high degree of management commitment to success; and finally must be willing to give to success what it takes by way of intelligent, prudent but diligent work whenever necessary. There must be a minimum allocation certainly in the development budget for rendering legitimate public assistance to SMEs. That there will be an Advisory Panel, equipped with professional expertise, with a lateral locus standi within the Ministry of Industry, mining its expert knowledge, scouring the profit horizon for the next big thing that especially small enterprises could have a natural ability to excel in. This Panel must be funded reasonably, with regard to what it takes to carry out rapid but knowledgeable appraisals. Such a brain-trust will work like a control-panel for screening-in on an early-on basis the products that small enterprises could own to succeed. This body will be tasked to identify thrust subsectors to steer the focus of small enterprises. The Panel will also supervise the professional work to be done within the SME Cell, which currently exists in the Ministry of Industry. That inputs from service-organizations (technical, marketing and management know-how) will, whenever necessary, be accessibly priced and then be physically available when they are needed by SME businesses. Objectives
The key objectives of the report of the SME Taskforce are to make a constructive and hopefully lasting contribution to identifying booster subsectors, and then to the leveling of the playing field for SMEs, and especially for small enterprises in these booster subsectors. SMEs, especially the small enterprises must be offered an enabling environment for routine operation and growth, unhindered by the predatoriness of stronger rivals, to name one of the most potent antithesis of their survival.
Methodology
The Taskforce has availed of a methodology that blends five best-practices, namely, (a) synopsis of first-principles that rationalize public intervention of any kind; (b) summary of deliberations from an intensive day-long workshop held in February, 2004; (c) the two reports produced by the BEI and BER; (d) lessons from case-studies of market and government failures; (e) stakeholder interviews (consultants, BSCIC, NASCIB, ATDP, some real-life entrepreneurs currently engaged in SMEs); and finally (f) distillation of international best-practice.
The drags the Taskforce faced
The Taskforce was handicapped by a paucity of statistical data evoking confidence in terms of the quantitative significance of SMEs in the national economy of Bangladesh
All too often, the members of the Taskforce were feeling as if we were on a mission to plan without facts or wage a war without maps. We had no evidence of certifiable authenticity as to which are the industries in which SMEs on our definition had prospered or withered. We had no firm evidence as to why they had prospered or withered. To the extent that casual empiricism led us to surmise that one or the other industry had seen their SMEs do well, there was no evidence at all to probe such episodes for their underlying drivers, for example, whether they had done well due to their ample wits, or they had done well due to public largesse (of cash subsidies, for instance). There was too little even of the data, not to speak of information or knowledge as to what are the quantitative laws of motions of SMEs in Bangladesh Bangladesh
Absent such any credible empirical basis for our work, we were reduced to depending on secondary research done by scholars, on abstract inferences we could reasonably make based on a priori theory, and on the accumulated practical work experience of a number of SME practitioners, both inside the Taskforce and outside. We freely admit that such an amalgam is scarcely an effective substitute for having and using hard results from seasoned analysts or analyses. Even so, we believe that, while not of a flawless pedigree, our recommendations are on the whole realistically actionable.
Section III
SMEs defined, and the booster sectors identified
Small and medium enterprises defined
For manufacturing industries, the Taskforce defines:
(a) an enterprise would be treated as small if, in today’s market prices, the replacement cost of plant, machinery, building, structures, and other parts/components, fixtures, support utility, and associated technical services (such as turn-key consultancy), etc, were to up to Tk. 15 million;
(b) an enterprise would be treated as medium if, in today’s market prices, the replacement cost of plant, machinery, building, structures, and other parts/components, fixtures, support utility, and associated technical services (such as turn-key consultancy), etc, were to up to Tk. 100 million;
(c) From both definitions above, land is excluded.
For non-manufacturing activities (such as trading or other services), the Taskforce defines:
(d) an enterprise would be treated as small if it has less than 25 workers, in full-time equivalents;
(e) an enterprise would be treated as medium if it has between 25 and 100 employees;
(f) From both definitions above, land, once again, is excluded.
Some rationalization of this twin definition now seems to be in order. First, it is believed that most small enterprises don’t require very much of fixed capital---perhaps, in the vicinity of several tens of hundreds of thousands taka worth. For instance, in light engineering --- the archetypal kind of industry in which small enterprises abound---the cost of setting one up is almost always well within the mark of Tk. 15 million worth of investment. Second, a fabric-making establishment with a capacity say of some 5 million yards of output a year is only likely to cost up to Tk. 100 million by way of the replacement cost of plant and machinery to set up. While the first is an archetypal of the outer limit of what a small enterprise can take, the latter is representative of what a medium enterprise can take. Third, the decision to omit land from the definition of eligibility is easily defended: land in Bangladesh has been subjected to a valuation based on speculation, not market forces based on cost-based analyses: many entrepreneurs who self-select themselves into creating enterprises on their own land could be excluding themselves from legitimate public assistance if land were included. Fourthly, many entrepreneurs habitually think of the input of land into the economics of their own enterprises as a service to be bought, not owned outright.
The role of SMEs in the national economy
Table 1: Growth of Small-scale Industry Sector
| Year | No. of Units | Employment | ||
| Small | Cottage | Small | Cottage | |
| 1981 | 24,590 | 321,743 | 322,110 | 855,200 |
| 1991 | 38,294 | 405,476 | 523,472 | 1,331,032 |
| 2001 (end of June) | 55,916 | 511,621 | 808,959 | 166,724 |
| Average Annual Growth Rate | 6.4% | 3.0% | 7.6% | 4.7% |
Source: Adapted from Ahmed, 2001
The highlight of Table-1 is in the fact that the growth rate, between 1978 and 2001, of employment is somewhat higher than for the number of establishments.
Table 2 Small-scale Industries: how other-than-farming drives their structure
| Industry Sub-sector | No. of Units, 1978 | No. of Units, 1991 | ||
| Number | % of Total | Number | % of Total | |
| Rice Mills | 12,242 | 51.00 | 13,482 | 35.21 |
| Bakery | 2,157 | 90.2 | 2,765 | 7.22 |
| Flour Mills | 1,315 | 5.42 | 1,718 | 4.45 |
| Light Engineering Works | 1,120 | 4.66 | 2,252 | 5.88 |
| Printing & Publishing | 995 | 4.14 | 1,775 | 4.64 |
| Readymade Garments | 757 | 3.15 | 2,365 | 6.18 |
| Saw Mills | 713 | 2.97 | 1,023 | 2.67 |
| Soaps | 143 | 0.59 | 351 | 0.92 |
| Plastic Products | 74 | 0.31 | 725 | 1.89 |
| Automobile Servicing & Repairing | 296 | 1.23 | 550 | 1.44 |
| Total | 19,822 | 82.6% | 27,006 | 70.5% |
Note: The only aspect of this table that is hard to rationalize is the fact that the number of the establishments producing ready-to-wear garments should be as high as 757 as far back as 1978. As far as we knows, the first ready-to-garments establishment in Bangladesh
Source: Ahmed, 2001
Table-2 shows, on the other hand, is about what drives at least the numerical structure of the SSI with regard to the composition of input and output: in other words, with regard to structural change. Accepting at face value the numbers presented in that table, the proportion of establishments with their roots in agro-processing is seen to fall sharply during the period in question: from 65% to almost 46%. This is a change worth bearing in mind.
Role of SMEs in the export economy
A sector can contribute to export receipts in two ways, namely, (a) directly; and (b) through the production of intermediates, processed and semi-processed goods. How important are Bangladesh
No credible information was available to the Taskforce to answer this question convincingly. There is however a lot of stylized evidence for other economies that suggest that SMEs are the mainstay for employment and work opportunities within Asian countries. In India
Box-1: SMEs in India
Source: Mukherjee, 2002
Corresponding data are not really available for Bangladesh Bangladesh
The Study by the International Consulting Group (ICG)
The only recent study which the Taskforce was able to lay its hands on is the draft report by Daniels (2003). There is no doubt that this is an important effort, as it analyzes data from 10096 enterprises throughout Bangladesh
Nonetheless, the following two tables from Daniel’s work appear to throw some light on what we have been trying to say in this report. The first of the table shows net profit earned by the sample enterprises, the latter being arrayed in order of their size (measured by the head-count). The result that leaps off the page is about an inverse association between size and net profit per worker: the large the enterprise, the less profitable it becomes. It is even correct to say that single-workers enterprises are the most profitable.
Daniel’s report as yet does not produce any cross-tabulation of net profit results in terms of both size and production of sector of origin, simultaneously. One could then delve a little deeper into these results. Daniel’s report also does not present any estimate as to the capacity utilization achieved by the various enterprises in the various situation. Absent such supporting analyses, it is not really possible to take our understanding very much farther than the fairly limited resolution of the issues that are really staring this Taskforce in the face.
This is one reason why the Taskforce believes it will be in the interest of SME policy work to have the data analyzed further, providing a breakdown between the “micro” and SME enterprises. Cross-tabulation of the data would also be of some considerable value. And finally, it will remain important to report the results of a variety of F-test on the data, in an attempt to perform testing of various hypotheses (that imply invoking null hypotheses of “no association”) on the data.
| Table 3: Median net profits per worker per year by gender of owner and sector | ||||
| | Female Owners | Male Owners | ||
| | Actual hours (Taka/work/year) | Full - time Equivalent (Taka/work/year) | Actual hours (Taka/work/year) | Full - time Equivalent (Taka/work/year) |
| Agriculture | 6,800 | 10.014 | 8,917 | 11,118 |
| Fishing | | | 17,583 | 19,265 |
| Manufacturing | 6,908 | 8,350 | 19,796 | 13,657 |
| Construction | | | 21,000 | 19,220 |
| Wholesale & retail trade and repairs | 10,445 | 6,922 | 23,742 | 13,567 |
| Hotels & restaurants | 4,646 | -567 | 17,793 | 6,794 |
| Transport, storage & communication | 13,475 | 4,197 | 31,938 | 18,104 |
| Real estate, renting & business activities | 13,788 | 13,293 | 19,850 | 12,219 |
| Education | | | 16,436 | 9,042 |
| Health and social work | 12,825 | 18,692 | 21,547 | 19,560 |
| Other service activities | 19,370 | 12,870 | 27,013 | 14,671 |
| Overall Average | 6,943 | 7,344 | 19,000 | 13,102 |
Source: (Daniel, 2003)
| Table4: Median profits of MSMEs by size and gender of owner | |||||
| | Female Owners | Male Owners | |||
| Size | Actual hours (Taka/work/year) | Full - time Equivalent (Taka/work/year) | Actual hours (Taka/work/year) | Full - time Equivalent (Taka/work/year) | |
| Number Of workers | 1 | 8,209 | 10,108 | 26,800 | 17,269 |
| | 2-5 | 5,571 | 4,795 | 17,833 | 11,247 |
| | | | | | |
| | 6-10 | 21,900 | 9,456 | 11,378 | 15,652 |
| | 11-20 | 10,862 | 10,418 | 14,800 | 12,458 |
| | | | | | |
| | 21-50 | 12,067 | 2,449 | 6,667 | 7,679 |
| | | | | 6,313 | 8,030 |
| | 51-100 | | | | |
| | | | | | |
| Total | | 6,943 | 7,344 | 19,000 | 13,102 |
| | | | | | |
Source: (Daniel, 2003)
It is not a little striking that, while the smallest enterprises should be registering such above-average net profitability, they should also be the objects of such sustained discrimination compared with larger enterprises when it comes to the question of accessing bank finance, or benefiting from other kinds of patronage, or indeed other service inputs such as mentorship. If the smallest of the enterprises can return such pretty stellar performance living by their own wits and due diligence, their financial prognoses would obviously become even much promising if policy-makers and their market rivals would only allow the playing-field to be just a little more level.
Having said that, the Taskforce is obviously under no delusion that the smallest enterprises are unlikely to present the most naturally advantageous point of intervention for any service-delivery program, should one be considered. The average cost of delivery (per unit of service delivered) is likely to be much higher if the smallest enterprises were to be chosen as the focal point of the intervention. Economics would appear to dictate that it is the largest among the small enterprises, and the medium-sized enterprises in the booster industries which, by virtue of significantly greater absorptive capacities and greater scales of output would, return greater cost-effectiveness in the results obtained. The Taskforce would return later to the selection criteria to be put forward as a part of its report.
We now turn to considering the rationale for legitimate public interventions to promote the cause of SMEs in the growth of employment, investment and output in Bangladesh
Rationale for picking booster-sectors in Bangladesh
Where others have used the coinage of thrust sectors, we have chosen to go with booster sector (as in booster rockets in a multi-stage rocket). The latter seems to resonate better with providing a boost not just to the growth rate of the sector in question but also, through backward and forward linkages, to those of the associative sectors as well.
Before proceeding any further, we must address more fully as to why we concern ourselves with establishing the rationale for publicly intervening. Aren’t these rationale common knowledge by policy-makers? Aren’t they axiomatically accepted among the community of practitioners? What can prevent the Taskforce from coming directly to a short list of promising industries in which SMEs numerically abound? Are these rationale worth the trouble?
Discussions in various past workshops on SMEs evinced relatively scant exposure to these rationales for assistance. The Taskforce consider it to be a lapse. This is because any promotional strategy is, by definition, prescriptive (and not assertive). All too frequently, promotions claimed to be legitimate and necessary were divorced from any discussion of precisely why public interventions were needed in the first place. Because some sectors need to be prescribed as more eligible than others for public assistance (which has to be earned on one reasonable criterion or the other), it is imperative that prescriptive rankings be followed up with disciplined rationalizations: they allows a structured approach to a debate. If recommendations or prescriptions were based on nothing more than personal value judgements, this would invite a failure by design of the Taskforce. Prefacing our prescription with diagnoses in terms of some failure of the system. or of some over-arching rationale (that runs in terms of providing leadership to a myopic marketplace to bring the appropriate kind of structural change in the economy) was accepted as a requirement.
We present the detailed discussion of these rationale in Appendix-1 to this report. For present purposes, we merely present these criteria of sectoral targeting, in their bold relief. We believe the following are the main operative criteria
(1) Strong comparative advantage: Sectors in which factor endowments are such as to confer strong comparative advantage compared with others qualify as a booster. Comparative advantage will be judged in terms of the sector’s domestic resource cost (DRC).
(2) Rising demand: commodities for which marginal budget shares are higher than average budget shares are those for which demand is rising at a higher-than-average rate.
(3) Backward and forward linkages: Some processing industries---agro-processing is an apt example--- can capture well forward and backward production linkages with other sectors.
(4) When the playing-field is not level: Markets virtually never perform as in the text-books, but are frequently skewed due to vast economic inequalities, asymmetric distribution of information, knowledge, and social-networking connections. Careful public interventions are needed so that a broad symmetry of resources can be made to prevail.
(5) The need for structural transformation is not transparent to the uninitiated
The technology shelf---the inputs, and how they can best be combined---and the demand-mix are not static but is evolving fairly continuously. This forces on markets the responsibility of signaling the need and, more difficult, the nature of structural transformation that can facilitate survival. In this context, Governments are supposed to have a superiority in terms of access to strategic information versus the private-sector. Based on this, the creation of new institutional delivery chains can legitimately be posited, to deal with the imperative of structural transformation in the economy.
(6) Structure of incentives: manufacturing vs. trading
In globalization, the formidable market power of global brands result in a structure of economic and financial incentives in the market place that is inimical to the domestic manufacturer versus the importer. It is arguable that a similar shift in the business mindset is enveloping Bangladesh Bangladesh
The “vulnerabilities” of SMEs
Many authors, including from India
If SMEs have to make a difference, they need to be compete on an even basis. The undeniable fact however is that there is a seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the competitive situation (capital, information, access to the powerful, educational attainment, etc) between the small and large enterprises. (Markets are thoroughly imperfect. And large firms dwarf SMEs in terms of supra-market influence and power.) Besides, it is also undeniable that a collapse in the cost of communicating across vast distances has tended to unify global markets like nothing before, as has a growing homogenization of consumption preferences: both have made competitive pressures even more intense. This has transformed the market dynamics, of which large as well as SMEs are merely parts. The competition is more chillingly intense now; the product life-cycles are shorter; production batches are smaller; information and communications technologies (ICTs) are much more of defining characteristics of a contender that counts. All of these add to the pressures under which SMEs have to operate.
According to Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, the following are the constraints to the growth of SMEs:
Box-2: Common constraints to the development of SMEs in Bangladesh
Note: The headings and categorization have been suggested by the Taskforce, (even though the individual issues are the creation of Bangladesh Enterprise Institute).
Source: Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, 2004.
And now follows an Indian take on the problem.
Box-3: Vulnerabilities of SMEs---an Indian take
 |
Source: Mukherjee, 2002.
The similarity of the two slates of “presumed constraints” is close indeed.
Only some of the entries in box-2 and 3 above have a blow-by-blow equivalence or correspondence to market failures or government failures or any of the other well-agreed raison d’etre for public interventions in markets. Not each one of these really amounts to a market failure which hobbles SMEs only and not large enterprises too. For instance, poor infrastructure in Bangladesh
This is not to say that SMEs won’t benefit financially if infrastructure were to be improved. They would. Point is that investment on infrastructure would benefit all sizes of enterprises: it is unlikely to remove what handicaps SMEs from competing evenly against large enterprises.
Another test is where it is possible to exclude firms in other than the target category from benefiting from the interventions in question. This test spells the difference between generic vulnerabilities (which strictly don’t warrant ameliorative interventions with sectional targets), and vulnerabilities that result from discrimination in the market-place or failures of policies (which do warrant them).
The Taskforce’s own catalogue of market- and policy-failures
The Taskforce have therefore exercised its prerogative to put down a handful of handicaps which affect SMEs differentially compared with their competitors. They appear in box-4:
Box-4: The Taskforce’s own diagnosis of the most important rationale for action
Now that we have laid bare the ingredients of the Taskforce’s global view, we can now proceed to the rationalizations that lead to the recommendations that it would like to make. Our recommendations fall into three categories, based on underlying time-horizons: short (impact in 18 months); medium (18-48 months); and long.
Recommendations for Short-term
The Case for Venture Capital
The Taskforce recognizes that the knowledge-economy has greatly increased the stakes to investments that are outward-oriented, have a high degree of intellectual-property (IP) content, and a high degree of leakage in the returns to such investment. Examples are software-development, manufacture based on the development of prototypes, creation of design leading to prototyping, enterprises naturally akin to creating intellectual-property, etc. In every case, there is an intractable degree of seepage of shareholder value: in economics, this refers to externalities. When externalities are outward, private rates of return tend to be lower than social rate of return, causing relative under-investment in such products or services. Gestation lag would on that account tend to be longer. Risk-averse private venture capital would likely be stifled by such longer gestation lag. Hence the imperative in such products or services for public venture-capital participation, so as not to stymie potentially remunerative private enterprise. Information-technology and electronics---two industries who in any case are closely inter-related---are prime examples of such negative externalities and, therefore, of such public venture-capital participation.
Such social commitment to the availability of risk capital, responding to the special circumstances of technologically-nuanced fields of enterprise development, is widely accepted as effective practice in India Bangladesh
The Case for a Proactive Lending Package for SMEs
The credit crunch slapping especially the small enterprises must be alleviated. Towards this end, worthy business ventures in designated SME booster sectors should be declared eligible to loans that are carefully scoped and appraised for their bank ability. We recommend that BASIC Bank be declared the Lead Bank for the delivery of such credit on concessionary terms.
The Case for restructuring the tax-package for very small manufacturers
The Taskforce believe that for SMEs, the VAT by being collected ex-factory increases the likelihood of double VAT taxation. The onus of the proof of first-time VAT payment to the tax assesses, the SMEs, leads frequently to denial of payment-credit. The small enterprise does not have enough clout vs the large trader, who had sold him the commodity, to press his need for documentary proof about VAT payment at the border. The small enterprise ends up paying the VAT twice over on account of imported inputs.
We recommend that rather than being slapped with an ex-factory VAT, small enterprises with fixed investment (without including land and building) of up to Tk. 3 million would be assessed a Turnover Tax at the rate of 1.5%. Enterprises with fixed investment ranging between Tk. 3 million and 15 million (again excluding land and building) would be assessed a Turnover Tax at the rate of 2.5%
On top of this, a further VAT at 1.5% is to be collected at retail point.
investment under Rs. 1 crore from all types of excise duty. Besides, they have formed a separate Ministry for Small Scale and Micro-Industries.
There should be no departure from the principle of duty cascading
At present, a UPS for computer is totally tax and VAT free if imported with a computer, and one has to pay only 7.5% import duty if imported separately. On the other hand for local production of UPS one has to pay 37% to 97% tax and VAT at import on different raw materials and spare parts.
VAT for imported UPS at the point-of-sale (POS) is zero. In sharp
contrast, a local manufacturer is required to pay VAT at the rate of 15% per schedules prescribed by the NBR.
The same applies for computers and solar PV generator systems, almost all of which are electronic. Again at sales (at production point), VAT is collected on the locally produced ones, while it is exempted for imported ones. Local capabilities exist to produce high quality UPS and the main electronic circuits for solar PV systems, but the Government tax policies have not only left the local producers unprotected, they did not even allow the local producers to play on a level ground. The existing policies also deterred local producers from attempting at producing or assembling any other parts of Computers and Solar PV systems. The suggested clauses will allow the local producers at least to play on a level ground, and will also deter such unreasonable reduction of tax and VAT on imported finished products.
The total incidence of all taxes at import (Import duty, Advance Income tax, Development surcharge, VAT, etc.) on the raw materials and spares of locally produced commodities must not, owing to the generally-accepted principle of cascading, exceed that on corresponding finished imported commodities. If such taxes for a finished commodity are reduced at any time, then the taxes on the raw materials and spares of that product will automatically stand adjusted following the above principle.
If VAT at sales is waived or reduced on an imported finished product, the total VAT collected for the same product at the point of manufacture and at the point of sales shall not be more than the above VAT at sales for the imported product, and this will also be activated automatically.
The Case for a Medium-term Tactical Plan of Action
A tactical plan of action is needed preparatory to ensuring that an enabling environment is created in which both extant and aspiring SME entrepreneurs find within an easy reach most of what they direly need---information, counseling, mentoring, access to finance, and marketing and technical assistance.
More specifically, the tactical plan will entail articulation of delivery chains for technepreneurship---a hybrid using functioning entrepreneurship in technologically-steeped lines of productive ventures to produce goods which enjoy high marginal budget shares but also demands mentoring in incubators---some kind of a crucible where the green young are moulded into increasingly savvy entrepreneurs under the watchful oversee of the veterans of industry.
Capacity-building
A capacity-building package will be needed to keep the process of SMEs development speeding along.
The tactical plan aiming at creating an enabling environment with regard to the availability of information, counseling, mentoring, access to finance and markets will be needed.
Fostering a supply chain for technepreneurship will be emphasized. Towards this end, mobilization campaign will need to be mounted to spur interest by intelligent and diligent people in careers of successful entrepreneurship. The SME Panel/Cell might usefully conceive programs in popular media, and motivate appropriate anchor(s) for them, modeled after some highly-regarded success stories.
The Taskforce would like to recommend a ground-breaking approach towards bonding and harnessing an entire online-community of both extant and aspiring SME entrepreneurs, to be hosted on a SME portal in the SME Cell, for the divining of technology, product and market trends, for career-counseling to benefit science/technology graduates, for technepreneurial problem-solving, for mentoring using guru-disciple symbiosis ---aiming at an end-to-end virtual-learning intellectual-property formation.
A Web-based virtual front-office providing all start-up assistance to SME entrepreneurs (application forms, FAQs, limited directory-assistance, success stories, horror stories, etc): an one-stop-service, with all interactions between the user and the system stored on databases in the interest of providing institutional memory.
Information regarding standards of labor and output pertaining to overseas markets to benefit export-oriented SMEs should be put on the Web portal.
A high-performance fiber-optics communications backbone be put in place in four of the country’s largest metro-markets (namely, Dhaka , Chittagong Khulna
We all know that technology now enables the migration of the cluster eco-system(s) to Web-based structures and communities, in which the MOI and other stakeholders can be motivated to create portlets conducive to sharing of SME-friendly content or knowlets: here, information and communications technologies will need to be pressed into service.[3]
Availing of the principle of locational self-selection
The inner cities within large metropolis such as Dhaka and Chittagong
Training
BSCIC---mainly in the form of SCITI---, BIM and BITAC are all institutions in the MOI with a great deal of past investment in equipment, infrastructure and trained human resources. It is agreed that currently a fair proportion of these resources are inadequately utilized. The OECD has emphasized that quickly enhancing human resource and institutional development capacities is a sine qua non of letting SMEs contribute their fullest towards poverty generation in the current globalization scene. BSCIC/SCITI, BIM, and BITAC should undergo a significant strategic reorientation of their own core competencies under the watchful eye of the Advisory Panel/SME Cell. In particular, the skills and competencies needed to enable SME hold their own in the booster-industries in the changed global business environment should be re-emphasized in the ensuing revamping of these institutions.
Towards this end, technical assistance and investment are both urgently needed to appropriately accent the training and motivational in these institutions so that they can become durable fixtures of technical and managerial skills can be nurtured, in a format of public-private partnership.
Section IV
The Selection of booster-industries as foci of SME development
By now, we have identified all the market and policy failures that hobble the performance of the SMEs and have clearly expanded upon the rationale for various interventions recommended. It now remains to pick the industries to be recommended as booster sectors for a time-horizon of, say, 3 years.
The following are the industries:
Rationale
Light-engineering and metal-working Linkage effects/natural survivability
Software/IT-enabled products Structural change/intensively requires innovation
Electronics/Electricals Rising demand/intensively requires innovation
Plastics & other synthetics products Rising demand Leather & leather goods Linkage effects Knitwear / Garments Rising demand Agro-processing/agri-business Linkage effects Healthcare and diagnostics Structural change/rising demand Educational services Structural change Pharmaceuticals/cosmetics/toiletries Structural change/rising demandWhat are the (various) rationale for our selecting these industry? They now follow, seriatim.
Light engineering and metal working is an industry in which local nature of the markets to be served implies that the typical output batch is fairly small, compared with minimum efficient scale (MES) of globally-branded companies. This offers a certain extent of natural protection from competition. In addition, this industry is suffused with both backward and forward linkages.
Software/IT-enabled products are worthy of selection because they intensively use knowledge of digital and/or web technologies. This is therefore easily accommodated on the basis of structural change. Furthermore, the marginal budget share of software-services in the countries in the Western world---the engines of the global division of labor---is a lot higher than the ABS. This is therefore a industry facing rising demand, too.
The selection of electronics and electricals---computer components, peripherals, stabilizers, UPS, amplifiers, switches, plugs, printed circuit boards (PCBs), etc.---is legitimized owing to rising demand, as they provide among the foundation of industrialization and urban development. Given the per capita income of Bangladesh
Plastics and other synthetic products (such as resin) have been known to lead factor substitution, and has been selected on this basis. This sub-sector has registered among the highest growth rates of any, according to Table-2 in the above.
The selection of leather and footwear is driven by the recognition that the livestock sector in Bangladesh India China Bangladesh
The selection of knitwear can be rationalized in terms of rising demand and strong comparative advantage.
Agro-processing/agri-business/plantation agriculture/specialized agriculture industry in Bangladesh
Intensively use farm produce that boast plentiful marketed surplus, and in addition are complementary to fixing nitrogen in the soil; Have enterprises and entrepreneurs who can deal with what it takes to successfully negotiate the hurdles implied by increasingly rigorous phyto-sanitary, and other epicurean restrictions in the importing countries;Healthcare & Diagnostics
The Taskforce recommends this subsector largely based on its rising demand domestically. Moreover, growing size of domestic market for specialized diagnostics has started to create opportunities for legitimate import substitution.
Educational Services
Pharmaceutical, cosmetics and toiletries
In 2005 and beyond, Bangladesh South Asia to benefit from an exclusion from the patent regime being globally introduced by World Trade Organization (WTO). This by bringing forth some significant competitive advantages of pharmaceutical companies will likely create opportunities, especially in the medium-enterprise category, for that industry in Bangladesh
Designer, aesthetically challenging personal wear and effects
The Taskforce accepts at least one booster sector to be selected based on the need to concentrate efforts for promoting women entrepreneurs. This booster sector is called, for want of a better term, “designer, aesthetically-challenging, personal wear and effects”.
Section V
Taskforce’s Recommendations by way of Policies & Institutions, Implementation Guidelines
1. Identification of booster Sectors
The following industries, including one based exclusively on the imperative to foster women entrepreneurship, are prescibed by the Taskforce for preference in terms of prospective public assistance and capacity-building programmes, within the limitation of a review every three years:
Electronics and electricals; Software-development; Light engineering and metal-working; Agro-processing/agri-business/plantation agriculture/ specialist farming/tissue-culture; Leather-making and leather goods ; Knitwear and ready-made garments; Plastics and other synthetics; Healthcare & diagnostics; Educational services; Pharmaceuticals/cosmetics/toiletries; Designer, aesthetically-challenging, personal wear and effects;Notwithstanding the prescriptive nature of the foregoing recommendation, non-classification as such should not disqualify an SME from financial assistance from any scheduled banks.
The Taskforce has organized its additional recommendations in three groups in order of their underlying time-horizons: short-, medium- and long-term. By short term, we mean actions whose impact may be felt between now and 18 months away. By medium term, we mean actions whose initiation could itself take up to 18 months, whose fruition could well take take between 18 month and 4 years. Long-term is defined as something that takes more than 4 years to fructify.
Short-term Policies
2.1 Framing and carrying out policies for SME development
2.1.1 An unambiguous policy statement declaring that the Government consider SMEs, especially small enterprises, as an integral and important element in the cause of economic growth and poverty alleviation in Bangladesh
2.1.2 An SME Advisory Panel be constituted to perform the services of a specialist brain-trust for the Ministry of Industries (MOI). Likewise, an SME Cell is set up in MOI to help implement the SME policies.
2.1.3 A roadmap and a tactical plan of action, to be conceived and then detailed by SME Advisory Panel and the SME Cell.
The Panel may comprise a few of the members of this Taskforce, other subject-matter specialists representative of the booster industries themselves, one or two certifiable role models of mass awareness-raising to generate mass interest in technepreneurial careers. In the medium term, the Advisory Panel and the SME Cell will eventually morph into what we call a SME Foundation (this is further detailed under the rubric of medium-term recommendations of the Taskforce).
The Panel will report to the Minister of Industries. The tactical plan of action is about what it will take to move SMEs forward the way they should.
2.2 Identification of SMEs
2.2.1 Defining enterprises for targeting purposes in terms of either fixed investment or head-count is an well-established policy practice, for instance in India. A one-attribute definition typically reduces the proportion of indeterminate cases compared with a two-attribute one. Any definition, no matter how well-thought-through is bound to involve some degree of arbitrariness.
2.2.2 For manufacturing industries, the Taskforce recommends that:
an enterprise should be treated as small if, in today’s market prices, the replacement cost of plant, machinery and other parts/components, fixtures, support utility, and associated technical services by way of capitalized costs (of turn-key consultancy services, for example), etc, were to up to Tk. 15 million;
an enterprise would be treated as medium if, in today’s market prices, the replacement cost of plant, machinery, and other parts/components, fixtures, support utility, and associated technical services (such as turn-key consultancy), etc, were to up to Tk. 100 million;
from both definitions above, land is excluded.
2.2.3 For non-manufacturing activities (such as trading or other services), the Taskforce
defines:
an enterprise should be treated as small if it has less than 25 workers, in full-time equivalents;
an enterprise would be treated as medium if it has between 25 and 100 employees;
From both definitions above, land and structures, once again, are excluded.
2.2.4 By making the definition especially of small enterprises more inclusive with a lower threshold for assistance eligibility, the outreach of SME policy for poverty alleviation and employment generation has been augmented versus all past statements of industrial policies.
2.2.5 Our proposed definition sets the threshold smallness at a much lower level compared with the treatment in the existing Industrial Policy of Bangladesh. The Taskforce recognizes that there will remain a need for National Board of Revenue (NBR) and other implementation arms of the government to incorporate the definitions in the declared SME policy within their own operating environment.
2.3 Setting criteria for deserving enterprises
2.3.1 Enterprises which, as well as meeting the size requirement proposed by the Taskforce, must have (i) proven credentials as an entrepreneur (for example, membership in well-recognized social occupational groupings) with requisite presence and facilities on the ground; (ii) an above-average insiders’ equity participation; (iii) certifiable professional specialization of top-management in relevant production skills; (iv) the stamp of approval from globally-recognized quality-assurance bodies (ISO 9001:2000, for example); (v) high management commitment to innovation. Women entrepreneurs will be accorded preference, wherever appropriate.
2.4 Rationalization of VAT and other budgetary measures
2.4.1 We recommend that very small manufacturing enterprises with fixed investment of up to Tk. 3 million (three million), should be completely exempt from any obligation to pay VAT. For manufacturing enterprises with fixed investment greater than Tk. 3 million and less than Tk. 15 million, the corresponding turnover tax will be 2.5% (two and a half percent).
2.4.2 We recommend that such very small enterprises (with up to Tk. 3 million in fixed assets not counting land and building) should be given a tax holiday for 7 (seven) and 10 (ten) years from their initiation, for enterprises in the cities of Dhaka/Chittagong and all other areas/locations respectively. Both recommendations will, we propose, be applied in all industries, not just the boosters.
2.4.3 Small industries in technologically-nuanced industries take substantial degrees of risk in new products through R&D. They crucially assist in developing technology base of Bangladesh
Exceptions:
2.4.4 The above two facilities will not be given to : i) Joint Venture industries with foreign partners, ii) Sectors that should be discouraged based on health, environment, or other grounds such as Tobacco, liquor and narcotics related industries.
Two blanket clauses to protect local industries from irrational tax policies
2.4.5 The total incidence of all taxes at import (Import duty, Supplementary Duty, Regulatory Duty, Development surcharge, VAT, etc.) on the raw materials and spares of locally produced commodities cannot exceed that on corresponding finished imported commodities. If such taxes for a finished commodity are reduced at any time, then the taxes on the raw materials and spares of that product will automatically stand adjusted following the above principle.
2.4.6 VAT on imported products shall not be less than that on like domestic products. Any reduction in existing VAT on imported products shall be automatically matched by an equal reduction on VAT on like domestic products.
3.0 Levelling the playing-field in credit and venture-capital markets
3.1.1 A credit-distribution package will need to be worked out by the Ministry of Industries. An innovative scheme---rather like a two-stage screening mechanism---that can really probe for the bone fide of the applicants as entrepreneur materiale will be deployed. Donor financial resources made available specifically to help with implementation of SME policy being enunciated here would only be allocated to competitively-selected enterprises within the booster industries here being prescribed. Of the total resources available, no more than 20% may be earmarked for medium enterprises, while the remainder, 80%, will be earmarked for small enterprises. Within each division, the resources will be divided up into a public-sector venture-capital fund (10%), approximately on the lines of the currently-implemented EEF at the Bangladesh Bank. The remainder will be allocated to a credit fund. (This does not have anything to do with debt-equity ratio relevant in discussions of enterprise financing.) In the short run, the distribution of the credit fund and venture-capital fund will be the task of the BASIC Bank, which is here being recommended as the lead bank, it being borne in mind that BASIC Bank will closely work with the Advisory Panel. (Over the medium term, this responsibility will devolve to the SME Foundation.) The Ministry of Industry and the SME panel/Foundation, as the case may be, will determine modalities of how to implement both the credit-fund and the venture-capital fund. Projects to be funded from the venture-capital fund will be evaluated by a team of experts---a handful of subject-matter specialists---which will be constituted as a part of the implementation of SME Policy.
3.1.2 A publicly-mandated venture-capital scheme be created in deference to the rationale cited in the main text. It will also give a stimulus to the morale of entrepreneurs who commit in-house capital to projects with novel and potentially innovative processes and technologies with demonstrable potential for commercial success. Such projects have a-typically high risk and high returns. This recommendation is rationalized in terms of the private under-investment based on extensive, even potentially crippling, negative pecuniary externalities in certain among the booster industries prescribed here, with regard to the leaching of shareholder’s value outward from the enterprise.
3.1.3 The Advisory Panel working together with the Lead Bank in the short-term, and the SME Foundation in the medium- and long-term, would implement a transparent and meritocratic arrangement for steering public equity and debt resources into a genuinely deserving selection of enterprises. The development of human resources in both the BASIC Bank and the SME Foundation with regard to effective targeting of resources made available under public equity funding would remain imperative.
4.0 SMEs need for quality-assurance (QA) stamp-of-approval
4.1.1 Bangladesh Starndards and Trademark Institute (BSTI) with its accountability to SMEs fundamentally enhanced through appropriate SME representation in its governance might become the focal point for offering assistance with regards to securing quality-assurance (QA) certification from registrars of QA. Such association(s) would be eligible to grants from Government towards the cost of setting up testing laboratories.
4.1.2 Small, out-right co-financing grants may be available for registration with globally branded QA registrars (say with ISO 9001:2001 or equivalent).
5.0 The urgent need for a major overhaul of the availability of reliable and current data about the characteristics of SMEs
5.1.1 The Taskforce recommends that the Ministry of Industries immediately take up the conception and implementation of a multi-stage sample survey of SMEs in the metros and the district headquarters. Ideally, there should be a complete enumeration of all SMEs, the data from which should be of use in drawing up a survey methodology for a systematic stratified random sampling.
Medium-term Policies
The OECD have recently opined that one of the major challenges of transitional and developing countries in this age of sweeping globalization is to ensure rapid development of the SME sector by harnessing scarce human and institutional capacities in availing of trading and investment opportunities. In consonance with this imperative, the Taskforce puts forward a package of medium-term recommendations.
6.0 The formation of a small and medium enterprises (SME) Foundation
6.1.1 Over the medium term and beyond, the Government must remove all remaining obstacles impeding the formation of an SME Foundation as a pivotal platform for the delivery of all planning, developmental, financing, awareness-raising, evaluation and advocacy services in the name of all SME development as a crucially-important element of poverty alleviation. This should be a PKSF-like foundation
6.1.2 The Foundation would, it is recommended, strive to ensure the provisioning of one-window delivery of all legal, administrative and regulatory facilities for SMEs in Bangladesh
7.0 A tactical plan of action that leads to enabling environment
7.1.1 The tactical plan is needed to move from gap analyses to skills upgrading based on the product(s) in the booster-sectors identified in this report, paying careful attention to the requirements of the production clusters in the inner cities (such as Dholai Khal, Mirpur,and the like).
7.1.2 An enabling environment in which both extant and aspiring entrepreneurs find within an easy reach most of what they direly need---information, counseling, mentoring, access to finance, technology and the means to market.
7.1.3 A serious effort is recommended for fostering a supply chain for technepreneurship. Bangladesh
7.1.4 An online-community, availing of relevant information and communications technologies, of both extant and aspiring SME entrepreneurs, to be hosted on a SME Web portal in the SME Cell/SME Foundation, for the divining of technology, product and market trends, for career-counseling to benefit science/technology graduates, for technepreneurial problem-solving session(s), for mentoring using guru-disciple symbiosis. (The Taskforce is fully aware that pulling off such innovation would require careful planning and nearly flawless execution).
7.1.5 A Web-based virtual front-office providing all start-up assistance to SME entrepreneurs (application forms, FAQs, limited directory-assistance, success stories, horror stories, etc): an one-stop-service, with all interactions between the user and the system stored on databases in the interest of providing institutional memory.
7.1.6 Information regarding standards of labor and output pertaining to overseas markets to benefit export-oriented SMEs should be put on the Web portal.
7.1.7 Such structures of electronic-governance should be supplemented, at least for a time, by human touch, with adequate budget to match, to physically attend to the needs of small entrepreneurs who take recourse to them. This is based on the recognition that a totally hands-off delivery of all requisite services to SMEs is an ideal whose achievement was likely to only happen in stages.
7.1.8 A high-performance fiber-optics communications backbone be put in place in six of the country’s largest metro-markets (namely, Dhaka , Chittagong Khulna Barisal
7.1.9 Technology-exchange programmes between countries with similar stages of development, and with a similar maturity of the infrastructural development for SME development, in the interest of rapid technology transfer.
8.0 Formulation of a package of capacity-building and training
8.1.1 Specialized professional expertise in carefully-chosen niches that the Panel of Advisors recommends has potential for a broad-based replication. Such training can be so packaged to such high standards that the recipients feel motivated to pay up user charges, however minimal.
8.1.2 Re-skilling boot camps would need to be organized for each of the booster industries by rotation, with a view to provide periodic technology grounding in efficacious skills among workers in SMEs.
8.1.3 (a) BSCIC/SCITI, BIM, and BITAC---where a lot of equipment, infrastructure and other resources are in place---should undergo a significant strategic reorientation of their own core competencies under the watchful eye of the Advisory Panel/SME Cell. In particular, the skills and competencies needed to enable SME hold their own in the booster-industries in the changed global business environment should be re-emphasized in the ensuing revamping of these institutions.
(b) Towards this end, technical assistance and investment are both urgently needed to appropriately accent the training and motivational in these institutions so that they can become durable fixtures of technical and managerial skills can be nurtured, in a format of public-private partnership.
8.1.4 The selection of such training courses and then the delivery of such training is an important instance of public-private collaboration.
8.1.5 R & D that lead to prototypes with a scope for replication in potentially high-impact product niches (eg in the field of mobile games, 3-D animation, or bio-optics, or the manufacture of computer-controlled industrial and medical appliances, or spurring the use of resin in new production applications, etc);
8.1.6 Curriculum of vocational training institutes be revised and reviewed to make it SME
development friendly.
9.0 Evolving of an SME eco-system: Issues of Institutional Delivery Chains
Two kinds of institutions are recommended, preferably for adoption by civil society role models/ catalysts, bearing in mind that these institutions will not be in the employ of the government.
9.1.1 The mission of the first kind is in trying to render stakeholders out of indigenous
young science and technology graduates by bringing to their agenda for poverty alleviation the currently-missing fulcrum of technological innovations to improve the quality of life of the poor in Bangladesh
9.1.2 The mission of the second is to achieve mastery over a rapidly-changing slate of
IT skills, and to then quickly disseminate them among young self-starters, including in the university/polytechnic/colleges’ stream, through a regime of online and “brick-and-mortar” interactions.
9.1.3 Efforts to accelerate the retention and promotion of women entrepreneurs should be
strengthened.
9.1.4 Greater stakeholder involvement in the entire gamut of activities by way of SME
development while maximizing the extent of ownership to be promoted.
10.0 Mitigating Impediments in clusters
10.1.1 One should make an effort to identify three or four promising lines of production in a handful of clusters in the metros of Dhaka and Chittagong
Long-term policies
11.0 Education and Generational Ethos
11.1.1 Bangladesh
11.1.2 Content of a kind that seeds, early on in the global-view of the children, the
attractiveness of entrepreneurial careers should be pressed into service.
11.1.3 Similarly, the accent on mathematics, science and technology fare should be made
stronger in the educational curricula of schools and colleges in Bangladesh
11.1.4 A census of all small and medium enterprises in Bangladesh
This is likely to require a very large investment.
11.1.5 The legal and contractual framework prevailing in Bangladesh
especially small enterprises’ handicaps. A survey of SMEs should be launched in order to identify these insidious legal irritants. These should then be systematically weaned from the world of Bangladeshi SMEs.
11.1.6 A small-claims court needs to be instituted, with requisite resources and mandate to
match.
Appendix-1
Criteria for Sectoral Targeting
The following are some of the major criteria that could be used for ranking various sector or sub-sectors in order of degree to which they were entitled to public assistance (bearing in mind that the Taskforce was severely constrained by the lack of firm data in terms of sectoral characteristics):
Strong comparative advantage: Sectors in which factor endowments are such as to confer strong comparative advantage compared with others qualify as a booster. Comparative advantage will be judged in terms of the sector’s domestic resource cost (DRC). DRC is the ratio between what it takes, in terms of nontradeable domestic resources, to produce a unit of output, to the net value added, in border prices, created by the latter. Agro-processing would be one such sector.
Rising demand: Pedagogically, commodities for which marginal budget shares are higher than average budget shares are those for which demand is rising at a higher-than-average rate. Marginal budget shares by exceeding the average budget shares over a period of time gradually augment the latter themselves. Just as the tide is said to be raising all boats, rising demand especially calls attention to items of assistance needed to ensure that all requisite and material inputs are available on hand, so that the opportunity represented by rising demand is not lost upon the entrepreneurs in the sectors in question. Electronics and electricals and metal-using sectors come to mind as examples here, as do software development.
Backward and forward linkages: Some processing industries---agro-processing is an apt example--- can capture well forward and backward production linkages with other sectors. Examples of backward linkages include manufacturing industries for meat conservation, machinery, and equipment, packaging materials and intermediate goods used in the processing (of meat, milk, to give just two examples). Examples of forward linkages include tanning operations, manufacture of footwear and other leather goods based on hides and skins. Light engineering come to mind as an example, as does agro-processing.
Investment in agro-processing not only adds value to agricultural commodities, but often makes them more tradable than they would be otherwise. Commercialization requires investment in processing of commodities to turn largely non-tradable rural economies into market-based economies. Improved processing of food and other farm produce can help improve the elasticity of supply of items that urbanites mostly want, and which are otherwise not always available, or are in limited supply, as urban income increases. Such improvements allow growth gains from increased exports to be converted more fully into further new employment and production, as opposed to inflation in food prices. “Consumption growth linkages” can be many times more important to growth than technical backwards production linkages (Delgado et al., 1998).
When the playing-field is not level: Markets virtually never perform as in the text-books, but are frequently skewed due to vast economic inequalities, asymmetric distribution of information, knowledge, and social-networking connections. Careful public interventions are needed so that a broad symmetry of resources can be seen to prevail.
If markets could be counted upon to deliver results that met Imperatives of good economics,
period after period, there would be no need for policy interventions. Market, however, fail,
and they fail often—hence public-sector interventions are needed. Sometimes, as well as
market failures, there will be government failures as well to worry about.
Yet another dimension of inequality is that a complete set of markets often don’t exist in some industries. For instance, insurance markets, adapted to the requirements of small-enterprise products, are often not available. Markets for knowledge-enhancing, knowledge-let, products are nascent or non-existent completely. And yet, while small enterprises have to adjust as best they can for a less-than-complete range of markets, large firms can avail of their access to the control-panels of governance in order to conjure up “by-passes” that suit them.
The Taskforce has a responsibility to identify industries in which such market failures are to be found.
At times, there will be government failures as well, to worry about. This happens when various government policies work at cross purposes, aggravating, on net basis, the market failures they were supposed, in the first place, to eradicate, or at any rate, to mitigate.
The returns to scale are sometimes increasing
Returns to scale are said to be increasing, when monetary economies are reaped as the scale
of output ramps up. This is anecessary condition for increasing concentration of ownership
in any industry. When technologies are such that they kick-in increasing returns toscale,
public interventions are usually called for so as to prevent growing concentration of market
power.
The need for structural transformation is not transparent to the uninitiated
The technology shelf---the inputs, and how they can best be combined---and the demand-mix are not static but is evolving fairly continuously. This forces on markets the responsibility of signaling the need and, more difficult, the nature of structural transformation that can facilitate survival.
For example, rising incomes, growing middle-class consumerism, and demonstration-effects-in-consumption translate into an output-mix weighted towards durable consumption items. For the same reason, there is a growing shift towards designer or branded items in personal consumption. Innovative, trendy design and “fashion” content are the key to success in this very fluid niche space: both put a premium on knowledge and continuous technical innovation. For small enterprises, to take advantage of this shift puts a premium on foresight and innovation. Information and sure grasp of knowledge as to how to make the transition is the challenge: such things call for custom-built structures of public delivery mechanism, as markets don’t exist for these inputs or resources.
Again, these days, knowledge coefficient in all manners of production is growing: the international division of labor is also reflecting this fact.
Strong imperatives to or compulsions for structural transformation or structural change---which necessitate compensating variation in stakeholder behavior or conduct or responses---provide a rationale for public interventions.
Structure of incentives: manufacturing vs. trading
In globalization, the formidable market power of global brands result in a structure of economic and financial incentives in the market place that is inimical to the domestic manufacturer versus the importer. It is arguable that a similar shift in the business mindset is enveloping Bangladesh Bangladesh Bangladesh
It is really moot if some of the failures cited in the foregoing are about to kick-off comparative de-industrialization in Bangladesh
Bibliography
Ahmed, M. U., 2001. “Small-scale Industry of Bangladesh Dhaka , Bureau of Economic Research, June.
Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, “ Issues in the Development of SMEs in Bangladesh Dhaka .
Chowdhury, Nuimuddin, 2003. “Tele- and Data-communications Infrastructure and Competitiveness in Bangladesh Dhaka , August.
Daniel, Lisa, 2003. “ National Private-sector Survey of Enterprises in Bangladesh
Wattanapruttipaisan, T., 2003. “Promotion of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Development: Some Issues and Suggestions for Policy Consideration”, Bangkok
[1] It is also true of course that some entrepreneurs have also floundered on the alter of setting up domestic firms oriented towards exports. Both refer to intrinsically difficult problems. However, domestic SMEs seeking to make a living off domestically producing manufactures for domestic sales have met up with potentially withering competition. Unless something is done to stanch this growing malaise, this could well become an epidemic, with clear implications for social harmony and political continuity.
[2] The Taskforce contacted Ms Lisa Daniel in an effort to explore whether it might be possible for results to be made available separately for SMEs and for the “micro”---the other subsector. DFID has finally pointed the database to the Taskforce: it is on the cards now that the Taskforce will make albeit limited use of this database. In fairness, though, “small” on our own definition include both “micro” and “small” enterprises.
[3] A portlet is a section of a portal---essentially a large Web site---that parlays specialized content to viewers: many portlet can be integrated to yield a complete portal as a content-delivery platform, such as Yahoo! or MSN, for example. Knowlets are knowledge-capsules that can assist in disseminating or mining or archiving knowledge. Using ICTs as a hand-maiden of fostering technepreneurship effectively would no doubt enjoy the earliest start among technologically demanding boosters on our selection, such as electronics, software/ information technology enabled services (ITES), and educational services.
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