A move is underway to establish technical support centers called 'Common Facility Centre (CFC)' aiming to help local small and medium entrepreneurs (SME), being run on a shoestring budget reduce their manufacturing cost with improved efficiency.
To this effect, the SME Foundation has recently submitted a development project proposal to the ministry concerned, officials said.
With the establishment of the CFC, small entrepreneurs group in remote rural areas will avail the scope to use modern machinery at affordable cost, which is difficult for an individual entrepreneur to avail the technical support by himself/herself with a hefty investment.
Contacted, SM Shaheen Anwar, Deputy Managing Director (DMD) of the SME Foundation, told the FE the key benefit of a CFC is to increase production with reduced time and investment.
"A small entrepreneur cannot afford essential machinery on his own due to fund crisis, but as a team they can avail modern technology from a CFC," said the DMD.
Explaining the concept, Mr Anwar compared the CFC with professional photocopy services.
"Using commercial photocopy machine is much more rational than buying a machine by oneself to ensure proper use of investment," he said.
For example, a SME apparel maker needs to carry his goods to remote destinations for availing a support like embroidery, Mr Anwar said, adding that if he can get the service at his own region, he can save both time and money.
"A lone entrepreneur cannot buy a machine, as there is matter of economic viability for equipments. You cannot make smaller and low- cost version of all required machines," he said.
Though installed by the supervision of the SMEF, entrepreneurs will take the responsibility of the CFC through payment of a marginal charge against the services they use, he added.
As per the project proposal, the foundation primarily is planning to establish five CFCs in the SME 'clusters' like Rajshahi's Kaluhati, Bhairab and Bogura's Adamdighi.
According to the SMEF, a specific area-based SME development is known as cluster. For example Rajshahi's Kaluhati is a shoe cluster, where a good number of shoe-making businesses have been operating with the continuous supervision of the autonomous agency.
Under the development project called 'development of SME cluster and enhancement of the entrepreneurs' production and marketing capacity', the SMEF will focus on overall development of 25 clusters in addition to the installation of the CFCs.
The SMEF is currently working to establish a environment to facilitate CFCs in SME clusters across the country. A typical CFC is equipped with two-fold facilities namely a production unit and an administrative unit.
Contacted, Md Shohel Rana, a shoe-making business owner from Rajshahi said at present they cannot accept large orders from clients due to unavailability of some essential machines.
"When we get a CFC here, we can assure the clients with the products quality, which is difficult to ensure with the traditional manufacturing method," he said.
The entrepreneurs in the Kaluhati shoe cluster need machinery including sole cutting, pasting, leather skiving and double feed swing machine, he said.
"If we really get the machinery under CFC, we can multiply our production at least two times at present with much higher standard of finishing", said the entrepreneur, who manufacture more than 200 pair of footwear per day.
The use of machine will also create employment opportunity for semi skilled and unskilled people, he said.
"With the traditional production method a worker needs to know every step of shoemaking, but machine facilitates the process for an unskilled worker," he said.
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