H.E. Mr. Abdulla bin Adel Fakhro, Minister of Industry and Commerce, chaired the sixteenth meeting of the SMEs Development Council, which was held via video conference with the participation of the Council members.

The Minister praised the tangible cooperation between the members, stressing that the coming stages require more solidarity to overcome challenges and successfully complete initiatives within the specified timetable to benefit the SMEs sector and contribute to its development and prosperity.

The meeting included a presentation by Ms. Shaikha Al-Fadhel, Director of the SMEs Development Directorate, on the national performance indicators of the SMEs Development Council, in addition to reviewing the values of performance indicators of the completed initiatives and their target percentages in the next stage.

Developments of the SME database project were also reviewed, which aims to collect data on growth of enterprises, as the number of institutions that achieved growth from March 2022 to March 2023 reached 4,301 institutions and companies, with a majority of micro-enterprises. Requirements for the second phase of the project were also outlined to ensure that the operational conditions of these institutions are followed up at a deeper level by linking the information available to members to form an integrated database to rely upon for the improvement of this sector's performance.​

Moreover, in a step aimed at achieving the best results and outputs for the years 2022-2026, the team consisting of representatives of concerned authorities evaluated all 43 initiatives and programs and identified challenges to ensure the desired workflow.