The women contribution to Gross Domestic Product is only 10 percent in the country which is far less than world average of 35 percent. It is stated by experts at graduation ceremony of second and third batches of women entrepreneurship course under Women Entrepreneurship Program.

The women contribution to Gross Domestic Product is only 10 percent in the country which is far less than world average of 35 percent. It is stated by experts at graduation ceremony of second and third batches of women entrepreneurship course under Women Entrepreneurship Program. The event presided over by UAF Vice Chancellor Dr Muhammad Iqbal Zafar was organized by the Office of Research, Innovation and Commercialization, UAF and Institute of Business Administration at New Senate Hall. State Bank Chief Manager Muhammad Akbar was the chief guest on the occasion. Dr Muhammad Iqbal Zafar said that women empowerment, their role in socio-economic activities and entrepreneurship are essential to progress and compete with world. He said that women needed to work on the ground to become entrepreneurs despite having huge potential in our society. He said that however there is a need to maintain balance in business and domestic life. He said that there is no relationship between age and starting a business. Even, senior citizen when they are considering them to be retired from job can start a business. He said the empowerment of the women was vital to achieve the dream of development. The women constitute more than 50 percent of the total population. Talking about the education, he said that women enrolment in the graduate programmes at the campus has touched to 50 percent. He said that if we teach a woman we teach a family. He said that there was the need to create the awareness among the people about girls’ education. ORIC Director Dr Zahir Ahmad Zahir said that such platform gives opportunity to the women to polish their skills in the entrepreneurship. He said that in the first two batch 40 women are trained who are running their business successful. Program Coordinator Hania Mudassor said that they program imparted 3.5 month business education to the women. She said that in the modern era, only those economics were flourishing which is knowledge based. She said that women participation in entrepreneurship will help them to make their live economical better. In charge Institute of Business Administration, UAF Dr Abdul Ghafoor said the women of the country was blessed with tremendous talents. He said that by giving them quality education, we can make the development rapidly. Dr Hammad Badar said that the program was designed to provide the practical business education to address knowledge gap which often constrain the women entrepreneurs in optimizing their productivity and profits. Dean Food Sciences Dr Masood Sadiq Butt, Dr Mubashar Mehdi, Dr Abdul Rasheed, Dr Khurrum Zia, Dr Burhan and others attended the meeting.