KARACHI, Dec 3: Pakistan has been ranked 5th in the world’s banking efficiency index, while it stood among the top 25 countries in terms of foreign direct investment and foreign labour as per the world competitive report compiled by the World Economic Forum, Switzerland .

This was stated by Sushant Rao, director and head of South Asia of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

He was speaking at the 11th management convention organised by the Management Association of Pakistan here on Wednesday.

He said that in overall terms, Pakistan ranked at 101 out of 134 countries, which are part of the report. He said that efforts should be made to improve the country’s perception among the international community regarding the business and trade environment.

Rao stressed the need to improve trade in the South Asian region, which currently stands at only 4 per cent as compared to trade in the Asean region, which is 45 per cent.

The convention was inaugurated by Finance Adviser Shaukat Tarin on Tuesday.

In his presentation via video conference from the US Rishi S. Jaitly, senior policy analyst at Google Inc. said that the new world of the internet has empowered the participation by a large number of people, who can easily speak to the world at large.—APP