News: CSF launching executive opinion survey in Pakistan
Name of the Newspaper: The Statesman
Date of publication: Saturday, 01 March, 2008

ISLAMABAD: The Competitiveness Support Fund (CSF) as the partner institution of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is carrying out the Executive Opinion Survey (EOS) 2008 in Pakistan for the Global Competitiveness Report 2008 2009.

The Competitiveness Support Fund, a joint initiative of United States Agency for International Development (USAlD) and the Ministry of Finance, has proposed a unique strategy to the World Economic Forum to engage the academia in conducting the Executive Opinion Surveys.

The CSF strategy has also been appreciated by the Harvard University and is being considered to being one of the most innovative strategies from any of the 153 World Economic Forum partner institutes.

The CSF held an interactive session with the Economics Department at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad to engage the faculty members and the students for this exercise.

The meeting included discussions on the Global Competitiveness Report 2007-2008, which is published each year by the WEF and benchmarks 131 economies over the 12 competitive pillars.

Amir Jahangir from the Competitiveness Support Fund informed the students and the faculty members that Pakistan ranked 92 out of 131 countries on the Global Competitiveness Index. He further elaborated the issues concerning Pakistan's competitiveness. CSF has adopted the approach of engaging the academia in developing and implementing the EOS strategy, which will be creating platforms for industry-academia linkage.

CSF team, which also included Hina Akhtar, Communications Specialist, floated questions across the discussion room to the students and the faculty members creating an interactive session on the importance of positioning Pakistan on a global footing.

Students were asked to describe their future vision and their potential impact on business community to which most of them had set plans of working in prestigious multinationals, international development agencies and research positions - all acknowledging the potential impact they would be having if they had stronger networks with the business community as well as a deeper insight into the issues of competitiveness.