CSF and World Economic Forum to develop a New Sustainable Competitiveness Framework in Pakistan

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WORLD NEWS CSF and World Economic Forum to develop a New Sustainable Competitiveness Framework in Pakistan PRESS RELEASE November 2, 2011 04:29 EST Share| As the world marks 7 billionpopulation count, Pakistan will become the 5thmost populace countrywith 314 million people in 2050 from the current 177 million. Pakistan mustprioritize its economic resource for a sustainable growth and economicdevelopment, Shahab Khawaja Islamabad, Pakistan – 2 November 2011 - To measure the impact of sustainability oneconomic competitiveness, the World Economic Forum and its partner organizationin Pakistan, the Competitiveness Support Fund will be working together indeveloping a new analytical framework – the Sustainable Competitiveness Index(SCI). The SCI takes a long-term approach to highlight factors that couldrepresent vulnerabilities to national competitiveness and productivity in thefuture. The Competitiveness Support Fund (CSF) is ajoint initiative of the Ministry of Finance, Government of Pakistan, and theU.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) established to repositionPakistan’s Economy on global competitive footing. Shahab Khawaja, Chief Executive Officer ofCSF said, “through its flagship GlobalCompetitiveness Report, World Economic Forum has over the course ofthe last three decades studied and measured the drivers of nationalcompetitiveness, including a wide range of factors such as governance,infrastructure, education, innovation and proper functioning of markets. Tosupplement this traditional analysis, the new index accounts for elementsrequired to make competitiveness sustainable over the longer run, in economic,social and environmental terms”. With this new methodology, Pakistan can actuallylose 3 to 9 positions on its current position from 118on the Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum, Shahab Khawajaadded. The recent events in the last few years haveindicated that Pakistan needs to put more focus on its sustainable developmentefforts, according to analysts, the SCI is extremely important for Pakistan, asit will provide the Government of Pakistan an overview on its long-termsustainable development initiatives. According to CSF, poor institutional water anddisaster management capacity in Pakistan are key indicators which will beaddressed by the SCI as its sub-indices focuses on the access to improveddrinking water, forest cover change and water stress index. The SCI maintains almost all of the elementsalready captured by the Forum’s existing competitiveness work, which areimportant for both short and longer term objectives, but it also integrates anumber of additional concepts, including social cohesion, environmental policy,resources efficiency, management of renewable resources and environmentaldegradation. With the goal of contributing to thediscourse about the drivers of sustainable competitiveness, and also ofencouraging feedback at this early stage that can serve as input for refiningand further developing the concept, CSF in cooperation with WEF decided torelease the preliminary results of this evolving work in the latest edition oftheGlobalCompetitiveness Report 2011. The SCI currently covers 100 countries, andan analysis of how the results of the Index differs from those of thetraditional competitiveness ranking provides a sense of which countries are notonly competitive now, but are also preparing well for their futurecompetitiveness. Sustainable competitiveness is a nascent areaof research, and the Forum’s initial work has shown that much of the datameasuring the key concepts is not yet available. It will take a multi-yeareffort to properly capture the concept of sustainable competitiveness throughreliable indicators that can be gathered for a large number of countries. To ensure that this issue is approached in acomprehensive way, the World Economic Forum has created a high-level AdvisoryBoard on Sustainability and Competitiveness to provide guidance and input intothe process. The Advisory Board members are drawn from the Forum’s Network ofGlobal Agenda Councils, representing leaders from government, business,academia and civil society. The Competitiveness Support Fund is the partner institute in Pakistanfor the Global Competitiveness Network of the World Economic Forum. As thepartner institute, CSF conducts the World Economic Forum Executive OpinionSurvey in Pakistan, a survey implemented globally in over 142 countriesworldwide. The results of the Executive Opinion Survey are presented each yearin the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report. To promote competitiveness in Pakistan, CSF disseminates the results ofthe Global Competitiveness Report and the rankings of Pakistan in order toidentify areas where competitiveness can be improved. It also encouragesdialogue and debate on competitiveness on Pakistan’s business, government andacademic forums.