Mrs. Masooma Sibtain, Vice President FPCCI while presenting document on “Women National Business Agenda (WNBA) “during launching ceremony of FPCCI – WNBA in Islamabad thanked leadership of FPCCI for providing tremendous support to encourage women entrepreneurs from their platform. She also appreciated technical support and guidance provided by Center For Industry Private Enterprise (CIPE) and USA with cooperation of all these policy documents has been prepared to facilitate women like business first time in the history of Pakistan.

Mrs. Masooma Sibtain further said that sustainable development goals adopted by the UN General Assembly in September, 2015 also recognized the importance of empowering women in key priority areas. As you all know woman constitutes 49% of Pakistani population but only 22% women participate in economic activities as compared 68% of men and only 1% women and women entrepreneurs as 28% of men. As a result, Pakistani women stand at 143 out of 144 countries. This simply reflects that relentless efforts are to be made to improve the rating for woman economic opportunities.

Pakistani women entrepreneurs face number of challenges for setting up and running businesses and there is lot of red tapism and hurdles that must be looked into by all the stakeholders for better results. There is definite need to create business environment for women and WNBA is certainly going to fill this gap.

She further added and appreciated the participation by TDAP, SMEADA, SSECP, State Bank of Pakistan, academia, researchers, women chambers and civil society organization and their full cooperation in meeting objectives of WNBA.

While concluding she thanked all the stakeholders for extending full support to make WNBA as success story and quoted Margaret Thatcher’s saying “If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done ask a woman “.