UAE company eyes financial inclusion of SMEs in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: A delegation of a United Arab Emirates-based company InvoiceMate Wednesday visited the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry to introduce their invoice management system on blockchain to promote financial inclusion of small and medium-sized enterprises in Pakistan.

The company's Founder and Chief Executive Officer Muhammad Salman Anjum, Co-founder and Adviser on Artificial Intelligence to the Ministry of Human Resource and Emiratization of UAE Saeed Alhebsi, Co-founder and Product Design Lead Muhammad Zeeshan Abid were part of the delegation, which was accompanied by Ms Rashida Bajwa, Assistant Director (ME-I), Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan.

Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) President Ahsan Zafar Bakhtawari, speaking at the occasion, welcomed the InvoiceMate delegation and assured them of full support in rolling out the blockchain-powered financial inclusion enabler system for SMEs in Pakistan.

He lauded InvoiceMate's efforts for revolutionising invoice financing by enabling the financial inclusion of SMEs and informal businesses.

He said that the financial inclusion of SMEs was very important to accelerate economic growth in Pakistan.

He said that SMEs get only around 6% credit of the total private sector credit in Pakistan, which is less than 1% of GDP and is a major hurdle in their growth and urged the government to increase credit to SMEs to at least 20% that would boost business activities and put Pakistan on the path of sustainable growth.

Speaking on the occasion, InvoiceMate's Anjum and Alhebsi said that they are keen to create sustainable financial inclusion opportunities in the Pakistani market.

They gave a detailed briefing to the business community about all the aspects of the world’s first blockchain-powered invoice management and financing solution that enables invoice automation.

It comes with function-specific features that provide efficient results while saving money and resources.

They said that InvoiceMate used emerging technologies like blockchain and AI that provides multiple benefits to the businesses including a 70 to 80% reduction in payable workload, 60 to 70% reduction in payment errors, 40 to 50% reduction in cost per invoice, 95 to 100% achievement in data accuracy and 70 to 75% reduction in reconciliation efforts.

Senior Vice President ICCI Faad Waheed said that SMEs were the backbone of the economy and said that ICCI would cooperate with team InvoiceMate in introducing its latest invoice management system in its member companies to increase their efficiency and productivity.