LAHORE, March 27: Finance State Minister Omar Ayub Khan has said that the government is focusing on innovation and competitiveness to ensure sustainable economic growth.

He told a seminar on competitiveness and economic growth held at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Monday that the emerging market economies had already adopted the strategy of innovation and competitiveness.

The seminar was also addressed by LCCI office-bearers, Prof Michael Enright, a member of The Competitiveness Institute (TCI), Board of Advisers and Director of Competitiveness Programme, Hong Kong Institute for Economic and Business Strategy and Mr Arthur Bayhan, vice-president of TCI and CEO of the Competitiveness Support Fund (CSF).

The minister said the government had established a Competitive Support Fund (CSF) in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as a platform for innovation and competitiveness in Pakistan.

He said the objective of the CSF was to catch up with the progress made in various countries on innovation and competitiveness to propel economic growth, enhance the quality production and create better employment opportunities for youth in future in Pakistan.

“The CSF through its financial facilities will develop appropriate instruments to upgrade competitiveness of the economy and promote overall competitiveness in Pakistan, which will boost the economic growth and create better employment,” he said.

He said Pakistan now faced an urgent need to ensure the competitiveness of its enterprises and services, to promote innovation to strengthen its economy, which was productive, and to create conditions for economic well-being of its citizens. “Pakistan needs to strengthen the conditions and institutions that will allow its economy and society to respond to challenges and opportunities of the newly risen global knowledge-based competitive economy.”

Explaining working of the CSF, the minister said the programme would use one of its financial facilities to promote knowledge-based enterprises.

Speaking on the occasion, Prof Enright said Pakistan had a lot of potential to further improve its competitiveness. Highlighting objectives of the CSF and the conference planned in May, he said the fund had three financial windows — Matchmaking Grants, Technical Assistance, and Business Incubators and Venture Capital.

Mr Enright, who is one of the pioneers of competitiveness, presented economic development and competitiveness of the Chinese economy. In his address, LCCI president Mian Shafqat Ali said at this juncture of history the biggest challenge before policy makers and the business community was as to how to keep the momentum of growth going and remain competitive.

He said the competitiveness required commitment to learn new technologies and to change accordingly to requirement of the customers. “Modern day business organisations must have a facilitating structure to learn and adopt new innovations. Top managements need to understand that only those organisations survive in environment of tough competition that support their team members to think and provide opportunities to learn. More importantly the business managements that have enough trust in their employees that they are allowed to experiment more mistakes, take more risks are the organisations of future.”

LCCI senior vice-president Abdul Basit said the organisations having strong research and development departments were more fit to survive in the complex competition of large markets. “With trade liberalisation, the impact of free market economy is bound to bring extinction to the organisations that are inefficient, ineffective and have poor productivity standards.”

He also appreciated the step to initiate relationship with consultant organisations that could provide the required mechanisms, and thinking paradigms for modern Pakistani business entrepreneurs for staying competitive.