ACCA joins State Bank to facilitate SMEs in Multan region

MULTAN: The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) has joined the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to educate and facilitate SMEs in Multan region to support their financial viability and ensure ease of access to finance, ACCA officials said here on Tuesday. Both the organisations are jointly setting up an exclusive virtual SME clinic to offer an opportunity to small and medium sized enterprises and aspiring entrepreneurs in the south Punjab region to get expert counseling on maintaining healthy cash flows amidst the current pandemic and to facilitate their easy access to finance. The ACCA's recent global survey reveals that the SMEs are hardest hit by Covid-19 and there's a need for collective efforts to help their future viability, with 53pc of SME respondents indicating managing cash flow is now a problem, compared to 46pc in the March survey. SMEs are also more pessimistic about their revenue predictions, with 85pc predicting negative revenue compared to the last year. Nearly one quarter of SMEs are still focused on the short-term period, compared to a tenth of their larger counterparts, due to SMEs having to manage their operating fundamentals to survive. With more than 227,000 fully qualified members and 544,000 future members worldwide, ACCA is the leading global body for professional accountants, which uses its unrivalled connections across the world to act as a global force for public good by connecting people with fulfilling careers, organisations with the best finance talent, and economies with the ingredients for growth. The SME Clinic will go live on Thursday, ACCA officials added.