March 23, 2008	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 14, 1429

ISLAMABAD, March 22: The Competitiveness Support Fund (CSF) is in the process of carrying out the 2008 executive opinion survey to rank Pakistan’s economy for the WEF Global Competitiveness Report 2008-09.

The survey will cover top-level business executives operating in Pakistan to capture their opinion on local business environment, said a statement issued on Saturday.

In this regard the CSF is also holding seminars to encourage greater female participation in the Pakistani economy by involving female students.

“This initiative will promote competitiveness as a research topic and will forge linkages between academia and the business,” said Professor Riffat Saqlain, Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at the Lahore College for Women University. “More importantly, it will help bridge business’ gender gap by including Pakistani female students in the process,” she added.

The CSF is an $11.8 million joint initiative of USAID and the ministry of finance. The programme will be interacting with other leading economic, business and journalism schools across Pakistan to create a network of more than 100 students and faculty members to carryout the survey from January to May 2008.

The initiative will also create competitiveness clubs and opportunities for academia to initiate research papers on competitiveness issues.

Support for CSF is part of the $1.5 billion in aid that the US government is providing, through USAID, to Pakistan over five years to improve economic growth, education, health, and governance and to reconstruct areas affected by the October 2005 earthquake.