The government has pledged to earmark fresh funding for small and medium enterprises, deputy minister of industry, mines and trade said Friday. “We hope that we can help reactivate those small industries that have most suffered from the economic stagnation in the past three years,” MNA quoted Mohammadali Abrishami as saying. He added that there’s a need for more than 100,000 billion rials of funds for preventing further layoffs in the SME sector, while trying to increase the output of those units that are currently experiencing low capacity utilization. Abrishami, who is also the managing director of Iran Small Industries & Industrial Parks Organization, said the government also plans to allocate lands at cheap prices to those who would aim to set up small industries in the country’s most deprived areas.
