UAE company keen to promote financial inclusion of SMEs in Pakistan

  • March 29, 2023
A delegation of UAE-based company InvoiceMate visited Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry to introduce their invoice management system on blockchain for promoting financial inclusion of SMEs in Pakistan. Muhammad Salman Anjum Founder & CEO, Saeed Alhebsi Co-Founder of InvoiceMate and Advisor on Artificial Intelligence to the Ministry of Human Resource & Emiratization of UAE, Rafael Shulz Founder BlockchainPunk Labs of Germany, Muhammad Zeeshan Abid Co-Founder & Product Design Lead at InvoiceMate were in the delegation. Ms. Rashida Bajwa, Assistant Director (ME- I), Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan accompanied the delegation. Speaking at the occasion, Ahsan Zafar Bakhtawari, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) welcomed the UAE delegation and assured them of full support in rolling out the blockchain powered financial inclusion enabler InvoiceMate for SMEs in Pakistan. He lauded the efforts of InvoiceMate for revolutionizing invoice financing by enabling financial inclusion of SMEs and informal businesses. He said that the financial inclusion of SME is very important to accelerate the 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 stressed that the government should increase credit to SMEs to at least 20 percent that would boost business activities and put Pakistan on the path of sustainable growth. Speaking at the occasion, Muhammad Salman Anjum Founder & CEO, Saeed Alhebsi Co-Founder of InvoiceMate said that they are keen to create sustainable financial inclusion opportunities in the Pakistan 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 & resources. They said that InvoiceMate uses emerging technologies like blockchain & AI that provides multiple benefits to the businesses including 70-80% reduction in payable workload, 60-70% reduction in payment errors, 40-50% reduction in cost per invoice, 95-100% achievement in data accuracy and 70-75% reduction in reconciliation efforts. Faad Waheed, Senior Vice President ICCI said that SMEs are 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.