Productive economic activities: FWCCI for involving half of female population

Faisalabad Women Chamber of Commerce & Industry (FWCCI) is making strenuous efforts to involve half of female population in productive economic activities in order to make Pakistan a progressive and prosperous country, said President Miss Qurrat-ul-Ain.

She was addressing a function to interact with the media persons here Friday. Explaining the economic strength of Faisalabad, she told that female entrepreneurs are also contributing their humble role in the overall development of Faisalabad and Pakistan but a major chunk of this sector is still untapped and marginalized. She told that FWCCI has launched a vigorous membership campaign to allure and attract females already working at the domestic or small scale.

Continuing, she said that there are some social and family constraints which are discouraging women to actively or independently start their own businesses and in this connection FWCCI is already organizing awareness and guidance training session in order to sensitized them. She told that she has chalked out a progressive strategy to involve the newly passed out female students of local universities and colleges in the productive economic activities.

"In this connection, FWCCI will try to provide the facility of incubation centers where females could give practical shape to their unique and innovative ideas", she added. She also told that State Bank of Pakistan has already offered a number of income generating schemes for the female entrepreneurs while startups will also be encouraged to avail from these schemes and "Kamyab Jawan" Program.

She further told that women could also be encouraged to enter into the tax net by availing from the facilities offered by FBR. "Under this scheme females have been given special privileges to file returns with zero return for 3 consecutive years", she added. Ms Qurrat-Ul-Ain told that Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) would also be inked with educational institutions and under this program, the passed out students would be offered short term entrepreneurship courses enabling them to start them own businesses instead of running after jobs.

President FWCCI told that she has planned various trade delegations for UK, Europe and Australia.

"The traditional and non-traditional markets would be explored to enhance Pakistani export to these emerging a potential market", she told and hoped that these delegations would also play their role in promoting the soft image of Pakistan in the international community.

Responding to a question, she told that awareness, vocational and technical programs for women could also be arranged in collaboration with TEVTA and NAVTIC while FWCCI is also working to establish its own training centre for the young female startups.

She also pointed out that an exhibition could also be arranged to showcase the products manufactured by female entrepreneurship. She urged upon female to get the membership of FWCCI in order to further expand their scope of work.

During this meeting Vice President Shama Ahmed and Secretary General FWCCI Miss Abeera Matloob were also present.