ISLAMABAD: The World Economic Forum in partnership with Mishal Pakistan will conduct the Executive Opinion Survey 2018 in Pakistan beginning in February 2018. The Executive Opinion Survey, “The Voice of the Business Community” is a major component of The Global Competitiveness Report and provides the key ingredient that turns the Report into a representative annual measure of a nation’s economic environment and its ability to achieve sustained growth. The Survey gathers valuable information on a broad range of variables for which hard data sources are scarce or nonexistent. High-level business executives operating in Pakistan will be surveyed to capture their opinion on the business environment in which they operate. The Global Competitiveness Report has been the World Economic Forum’s flagship publication since 1979 and is widely recognized as the world’s leading cross-country comparison of factors affecting economic competitiveness and growth. A sample of company executives in Pakistan will be asked to complete this important and confidential survey. Mr. Amir Jahangir, Chief Executive Officer of Mishal Pakistan notes that it is vitally important that each executive sampled complete the survey, the valuable input is crucial to generate key data on influencing Pakistan’s indices reflecting the information communication technology, technological readiness, business dynamism and innovation capacity. The report for 2018-2019 is expected to be issued in the Q3 of 2018. Mishal also publishes global rankings of the national institutions along with the Global Competitiveness Report. To improve the soft-data on Pakistan, the World Economic Forum works closely with Mishal Pakistan. Last year a total of 526 respondents from the business community were reached out through the annual Executive Opinion Survey, whereas 236 were selected from 2016 and 290 were reach in 2017. The World Economic Forum reached out to more than 12,755 business leaders globally. Pakistan had the third largest sample size in the world after China and Mexico in 2017. The Executive Opinion Survey feeds into the Global Competitiveness Report, which is an annual assessment of the factors driving countries’ productivity and prosperity. the World Economic Forum defines competitiveness as the set of institutions, policies and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country, GCI scores are calculated by drawing together country-level data covering 12 categories – the pillars of competitiveness – that collectively make up a comprehensive picture of a country’s competitiveness. The Global Competitiveness Report’s competitiveness ranking is based on the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), which was introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2005. The 12 pillars of Competitiveness are: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial market development, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication, and innovation. Established in 2003, Mishal Pakistan is the Country Partner Institute of the Future of Economic Progress System Initiative, World Economic Forum and it aims to improve Pakistan’s ranking on the Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum. As a partner institute Mishal is working on measuring Pakistan’s performance on multiple international indices and reports including the Global Competitiveness Index/Report, Global Gender Gap Index, Global Enabling Trade Index, Global Information Technology Report – Network Readiness Index, Financial Development Index and the Global Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index. Published in Daily Times, February 7th2018.