ISLAMABAD, May 15: Pakistan could be left out from the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) this year as the country’s private sector has not yet submitted to the forum its executive opinion survey forms.

The GCR is based on survey responses, which are kept confidential, from 120 member countries and is widely recognised as the world leading cross-country comparison of factor affecting economic competitiveness and growth.

Arthur Bayhan, chief executive officer of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), addressing at a regional conference on “Competitiveness and Economic growth in Asia”, held here on Monday said that the WEF was very much concerned as people associated with the Pakistani private sector had not yet submitted the survey forms despite the fact that its May 27 deadline was approaching fast.

This year’s GCR would be released in October, however, so far the forum had not received any survey forms filled by the Pakistani private companies, financial institutions and business and industry.

Pakistan is required to submit at least 70 survey forms to the WEF in order to stay in the ranking process.

First released in 1979, GCR provided a comprehensive assessment of economic competitiveness of over 120 countries. In the GCR for 2005, Pakistan had been ranked at 83rd among the group of 117 nations, Mr Bayhan said.

He said the next GCR would show where Pakistan would be standing as far as its economic competitiveness was concerned.

He said the survey forms could not be filled by the public sector.

He said the WEF had two main concerns for the Pakistan’s private sector: the private companies were not focussed and were dealing with everything and had no mid-term or long-term policies.

Last year, he said, Pakistan’s public sector was ranked at 103 among 177 countries, a very lower rank. The main reasons for the low ranking were the lack of professionalism and transparency in Pakistan’s public sector.