ISLAMABAD: With 11 points improvement, the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) stood 90th among 100 non-US global think tanks, according to the 15th edition of University of Pennsylvania Global Go To Think Tank Index (GGTTI) released across the world.

It retained its first position in Pakistan for the last many years, and with improvement of four points it ranked 11th among the South East Asia and the Pacific region.

A press release issued by SDPI said that the 2020 GGTTI is based on the ranking done for over 8,500 think tanks (TT) registered with GGTTI from across the globe, selected through a rigorous criterion.

The University of Pennsylvania under GGTTI initiative organised a global webinar on the eve of the global launch of the GGTTI 2020 report and invited representatives of 20 world-renowned think tanks including SDPI whose case studies were presented at the webinar on ‘Best Policy and Institutional Response to COVID-19’ while working with their respective policy makers.

The SDPI executive director presented the institute’s case study of developing ‘food security dashboard’ under the office of the prime minister to monitor the food security situation amid pandemic and in general situation.

Launching the 2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index report, the SDPI Executive Director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (), Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri said: “Despite all hardships amid impacts of COVID19 and much of the work done by SDPI on virtual platforms and difficulties faced by civil society and think tanks, SDPI has improved its ranking in the index and continued to be figured as a prominent global think tank since 2017. This year, SDPI has increased its positioning in 6 key categories and retained its position in 5 categories’.

The SDPI retained its position and ranked 52nd as an independent think tank.

The institute retained its 64th position in the media work category. Similarly, SDPI retained its 60th position in institutional collaboration category, 99th position in social policy and 66th position in environment policy category.

Congratulating the SDPI’s staff and the management, SDPI Board of Governors Chairperson Shafqat Kakakhel said: “Despite several constraints SDPI has achieved a milestone of improving its position and was ranked among top 100 non-US think tanks,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 30th, 2021