The New Nation - Internet Edition

Our correspondent, Chittagong

The speakers at a workshop stressed the need for making more income generating scopes for women through easy access to fund for setting up small and medium scale enterprises for increasing national economic growth.

They said the national development would simply be impossible keeping the women, who constitute almost half of the total population, on the sidelines of the economic activities.

The speakers expressed the views at a workshop dubbed 'Stakeholder Consultation Workshop' arranged by the Bangladesh Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BWCCI) at a local hotel today with the cooperation of the Centre for International Private Enterprise(CIPE).

The speakers felt for a comprehensive women-friendly business policy, which they said would help develop women entrepreneurship quickly in the country.

The speakers at the workshop discussed the hurdles the women face in the run up to their entrepreneurship.

Vice-chancellor of Chittagong University Prof. Anupam Sen was the Chief guest at the workshop while Chief education officer of Chittagong City Corporation(CCC) Prof. Rawshan Akhter Hanee and senior journalist M Nasirul Huq attended it as the special guests.

Director of Promoting Women Entrepreneurship Through Advocacy Project(PWETAP) Mujibur Rahman highlighted outcome of such workshops held earlier at Rajshahi, Barisal, Khulna and Sylhet.

He said lack of access of women to fund, social taboo, lack of leadership of the women to entrepreneurships , poor marketing facilities, information gap, bureaucratic complexity, corruption and inadequate skill were blamed as the major hurdles for the women. The women entrepreneurs said they would be major partners in the economic growth provided the barriers are removed by formulating a comprehensive business policy for them.

Rahman said they hope to place the brief and finalized proposals after summing up recommendations and requirements to the government for action.

They stressed that convincing of the decision makers of banks and financial agencies for easy access to fund support to the women entrepreneurs, setting up of bank exclusively for wormen, media campaign for drawing state support, providing need-based training, continuous follow up, adequate storage facilities access to information, and logical period for interest holiday on the capital supplied were identified as the means for solution to their problems.