News: Pakistan improves competitiveness, declares WEF report 2006
Name of the Newspaper: Daily Times
Date of publication: Friday, Sep 29, 2006

ISLAMABAD: The World Economic Forum (WEF) has identified three major areas like infrastructure, education and skill development as gap in the further improvement in Pakistan’s global competitiveness ranking.

However, WEF’s newly released Global Competitiveness Report 2006 finds that Pakistan has improved its competitiveness ranking from 94 to 91 among 120 countries of the world.

The ministry of finance is due to launch the first of its kind ‘State of Pakistan Competitiveness’ report in February 2007, covering all the important indicators for bench marking as well as further improvement.

Addressing a press conference here on Thursday Minister of State for Finance and Revenues Omer Ayub Khan along with Aurther Behen, Chief Competitiveness Support Fund (CSF), said that Pakistan showed solid improvement from last year’s 94th place to 91st place this year.

Some 125 countries participated in this year’s survey over 117 in the prior year. Pakistan’s move up the ranks added significance when compared to the drop in the rankings experienced by many noteworthy emerging economies like Brazil, China, Malaysia, Russia and Thailand.

Russia and Brazil dropped by 9 places in the GCI ranking, China by 6, Thailand by 2 and Malaysia by 1. With its rise of two places over the last year, regional competitor India failed to keep pace with Pakistan’s improvement.

Omer said that a host of indicators make up the GCI. Pakistan ranked 79 for Initiatives, 67 for Infrastructure, 86 for Macro Economy, 54 for Market Efficiency, 89 for Technological Readiness, 60 for Innovative Factors and 66 for Business Sophistication in the world.

Omer termed Pakistan’s ranking improvement in the GCI as a result of the reforms and higher spending in the infrastructure during the last few years. He said that this ranking still indicates that there is a need to put further emphasis on primary, secondary and tertiary education, in ways that contribute to the tactical skills of the workforce.

He said that the report also suggest that Pakistan would do well to increase its number of business educational institutions. Interestingly, Pakistan scores relatively well in areas related to innovation and business sophistication.

Mr. Aurther said pointed out that the Competitiveness Support Fund (CSF) which is a joint initiative of Ministry of Finance and United States Agency for International Development USAID, is working closely with World Economic Forum on the ranking of Pakistan as well as on identifying the areas to be improved and methodology that will bring about help create university and industry linkages to promote knowledge-based enterprise, knowledge based economy in the Pakistan.

He said that CSF is at present doing policy analysis in the areas like motorcycle industry, food processing, fisheries processing industry where Pakistan has competitive edge and can improve its exports.

He said that the CSF is trying to develop a strong partnership between government, industry and universities to promote research activities and commercialisation of important research and ideas for benefit of the peoples. He said that Pakistan’s global Competitiveness Index can further be improved through upgrading of skills of the industrial as well as the agriculture workers and CSF is also focusing these areas.