KARACHI, April 19: The Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub Khan, who also heads Competitiveness Support Fund (CSF), agreed to look into the proposal to allow the private sector to utilise the workers' profit participation fund (WPPF) for setting up training institutions for the children of the workers.

All profitable businesses are required under the law to share five per cent of their yearly pre-tax profits with workers. The formula of distribution is such that the major chunk in the case of large companies entire deductions land with the government.

There are reasons to believe that funds deposited under the scheme running in billions of rupees have not been used properly.

He was speaking on at the concluding workshop on competitiveness at the Pakistan Business Council's (PBC) here on Thursday.

The PBC has proposed to incorporate the WPPF suggestion in the next budget as it would help enhance the quality of the human resource in the country.

The minister also agreed that the PBC and CSF will work jointly for the effective implementation of corporate governance in Pakistan, said a joint statement issued at the concluding session of the workshop on competitiveness held at the PBC headoffice.

The PBC had invited the minister to address the issues related to the private sector in recently released Pakistan's Competitiveness Report 2007 prepared by the CSF. Secretary Board of Investment Mushtaq Malik also attended the meeting.

The participating members pointed out several snags within their organisations and suggested various means to overcome these problems.

Speaking on the occasion, Omar Ayub said the government was trying to create a pro-business environment as the GDP has doubled in the last 4-5 years and Pakistan is now eyed by many countries which want to invest in this growing economy.

Arthur Bayhan, chief executive officer of CSF in his presentation briefed the audience on the salient features of Pakistan's Competitiveness report.

Speaking on the occasion, Chairman Pakistan Business Council Razzaq Dawood said that the CSF report’s findings were very interesting for the private sector. He said that staff training, reliance of professional management and development of instruments for extending regional sales.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2006-07, Pakistan is consistently improving in terms of competitiveness and dynamism. However the private sector lags behind in Pakistan.

Both PBC and CSF will jointly be forming a roundtable on Corporate Governance (RCG) shortly. The proposed RCG will have members from both the public and private sector.