KARACHI, Feb 20: Women population of the country will have to be equipped with skills to productively integrate them into the economic mainstream to scale up on the chart of global competitiveness.

A consensus to this effect was evolved amongst the representatives of the government, private sector and civil society organisations. The roundtable discussion, the first in a series of three meetings, was organised here by the Competitive Support Fund (CSF).

The conference was aimed to provide input in drawing up an action plan to establish that the competitiveness in Pakistan is linked to more active involvement of its women population.

Arthur Bhayan, the CEO of CFS was assisted in the meeting by Dr Shane Tarr in the meeting, who is engaged by the organisation to prepare a draft outline of the said project.

The country’s ranking on the chart of global competitiveness prepared by the World Economic Forum is 91st amongst 125 countries evaluated from around the world. Among other factors low labour productivity has been identified as a major reason impacting on the competency of the country as compared to other nations.

Improving competitiveness is crucial for sustainable growth. It becomes all the more important in a resource deficient country that needs foreign investment to bridge the gap between internal savings and investments requirements necessary to sustain the current level of economic growth.

In an interactive environment several proposals were forwarded by the participants. Qamaruz Zaman Shah, who heads Sindh Chamber of Agriculture emphasised the involvement of rural women in skill development projects to improve productivity of the agriculture sector and transform living environment of the laborious workers by improving returns for the work done in the form of better wages or better output in the field.

Women in rural Pakistan are engaged in wheat fields, cotton picking, rice transplantation, sugarcane sowing, etc. besides, attending to responsibilities towards their families in a traditional environment.

The CSF representative, however, clarified that the project at this stage would focus on areas where prospects of improvement in productivity with skill enhancement are demonstrably high over a span of three months.

“Women trained with the support of fund should be able to work more efficiently and should be able to earn more than what they were earning before,” Dr Shane emphasised.

The CSF has decided on the basis of comparative advantage and higher level of manpower engagement to focus on motorcycle, food processing, fisheries and automotive sectors.