The Young Entrepreneurs Forum (YEF) of Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) in collaboration with Centre for International Enterprise (CIPE) and Kauffman celebrated the Global Entrepreneurship Week 2014.
The event was attended by a large number of students of major universities including Bahria, Air, COMSATS, Quaid-e-Azam, Virtual and Iqra universities.
YEF Chairman Shaban Khalid, Pappasallis Restaurant CEO Zeenat Ayesha and Research Center for Peace and Development Initiatives Manager Fayyaz Yasin were the panellists for the event.
Speaking at the occasion, Acting ICCI President Shakeel Munir stressed that youth should prefer becoming job creators instead of job seekers as Pakistan was a big market of consumers. He hoped that the recommendations given by the students to remove corruption would get due attention of policymakers.
YEF Chairman Shaban Khalid also highlighted the role of YEF of ICCI for the development of an ecosystem for entrepreneurial culture in the country. He stressed students to think seriously for starting business ventures as it offered great prospects for growth. He also emphasised stressed that students should come up with creative ideas to fight against corruption from the society. He also shared his experiences with the students on how to become a progressive entrepreneur.
The students came up with many recommendations to overcome corruption that hampers entrepreneurship. They urged for developing proper SOPs and their implementation in public sector organizations, which will help in reducing corruption. They also stressed for ending red-tape culture from bureaucracy, developing transparent procedures, strong institutional mechanisms, promoting better linkages between universities and industries, involvement of youth in ideas development, practical application of theoretical knowledge taught in universities, creating better awareness and education about entrepreneurship and against corruption from schools, discouraging monopolies in business, privatising utility service providers, establishing strong autonomous accountability bodies, introducing flat tax rates, ensuring compliance of intellectual property rights, promoting IT solutions to reduce interaction between entrepreneurs and government authorities etc.
The panellists also shared their ideas and experiences with the students on how to deal with corruption that hampers entrepreneurship. It was the consensus view of the event that honest and clean practices were the way forward to reduce that hampers entrepreneurship.
