Ahsan Zafar Bakhtawari, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that the government should take policy measures to create an ecosystem for entrepreneurship and startups that would help promote businesses and revive the economy. He said that Pakistan is a country of young population with over 60 percent share of youth in our total population. Therefore, every possible effort should be made to develop this huge pool of human capital by providing them business education so that they could be equipped with the right knowledge for business-startups and be enabled to play more effective role in the economic development of the country. He said this while addressing as keynote speaker at Business Summit 23 organized by Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry in collaboration with The Career Class in its auditorium.

Ahsan Bakhtawari said that the government cannot provide jobs to all educated youngsters and the best option to absorb youth in productive activities is to facilitate and encourage them towards entrepreneurship so that instead of becoming job seekers, they could start business ventures and become job creators for others. He said that ICCI has taken many initiatives for youth entrepreneurship and economic empowerment of women and reiterated that the Chamber would continue to work with universities and educational institutions to foster a culture of entrepreneurship in youth so that many of them could become tomorrow’s owners of many national and multinational companies and make significant contribution to the economic development of the country. He stressed that all stakeholders including the government, academia and the regulators should play their part to create a conducive environment for entrepreneurs and startups in Pakistan.

Azhar ul Islam Zafar, Vice President ICCI said that there is a strong correlation of startups with economic growth of a country as when entrepreneurs and startups flourish, economy flourishes. He said that Pakistan has yet to evolve an ecosystem for entrepreneurs and startups as no high potential breakthroughs have been seen so far which can put Pakistan on the map as an entrepreneurial country. He stressed that Pakistan should move fast to evolve a healthy ecosystem for entrepreneurs so that our youth could be facilitated in business enterprises.

Kamran Z. Rizvi, Executive Coach and Organization Development Consultant in his keynote speech highlighted the importance of optimizing the operations in business enterprises. Many other Keynote Speakers spoke on many important topics including human resource development, finance, technology, product development, entrepreneurship and others.