KARACHI, Oct 22 (Focus Pakistan) - The Meezan Bank-UNIDO-ITPO partnership will introduce a new advisory unit to help Pakistani startups and small businesses grow through mentoring, investor connections and enterprise development services. Pakistan's largest Islamic bank says access to financing alone cannot address the challenges facing emerging businesses.
The bank exchanged letters with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization’s Investment and Technology Promotion Office in Bahrain (UNIDO ITPO Bahrain) and the International Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ICEI) to create the unit, which it calls a Focus Group.
The group will offer non-financial services to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), startups and businesses run by women and young people, the bank said. It will base its work on the Enterprise Development and Investment Promotion (EDIP) methodology that UNIDO’s Bahrain office developed.
“MSMEs, startups, and women and youth entrepreneurs are central to Pakistan’s economic future. Yet, access to finance alone is not enough,” Meezan President and Chief Executive Syed Amir Ali said in a statement. “Many promising businesses also need guidance, skills and the right connections to grow,” he said.
The bank did not say when the unit would open, what it would cost or how many firms it would take on.
Advisers at the unit will train and mentor founders, help them get ready to pitch, then put them in front of investors. It will also offer incubation, export and market-access support, and links to new technology, and will refer clients to Meezan’s financial products.
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UNIDO ITPO Bahrain will advise on the group’s structure, transfer EDIP tools, train bank staff and connect the unit with local and international partners, the statement said. The office will also steer entrepreneurs toward clean energy, the marine economy, creative industries and services for the elderly.
UNIDO’s Bahrain office has run EDIP since 2000. By mid-2020 it had held 112 programmes in Bahrain, supporting 6,000 entrepreneurs who set up 2,000 businesses and created about 16,000 jobs, according to UNIDO. The agency says EDIP operates in 52 countries.
Hashim Hussein, head of UNIDO ITPO Bahrain, said the office aimed to turn the unit into “a regional model for entrepreneurship support in the banking sector.”
Sheikh Ebrahim Bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, who chairs the ICEI and the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), signed for the ICEI. He served as Meezan’s founding chairman.
“Our ambition was to demonstrate that Islamic banking could succeed at scale in Pakistan,” he said. “Today, we have an opportunity to take that vision further from building a successful Islamic bank to helping build successful enterprises.”
Meezan has no shortage of cash. Its deposits grew 23% from a year earlier to 3.7 trillion rupees at end-June, according to its half-year results briefing. Its advances-to-deposits ratio slid to 44% from 51% in December, so the bank lent out less than half of what customers parked with it.
Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has put the sector’s share of GDP at about 40%, and its share of exports near 25%. At a 2024 meeting Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif chaired, officials counted 5.2 million small and medium enterprises.
Meezan Bank is not the first Pakistani institution to adopt the EDIP framework. The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry signed letters of consent with UNIDO’s Bahrain office before it, with a plan to open EDIP centres inside the federation.
The lender ran 1,150 branches in 372 cities in June. It wants 100 more open by December.
