Purpose In the past few years, the concept of competitiveness developed by the World Economic Forum has become the focal point. Global competitiveness index (GCI) presents the constructs which are possible means of productivity of the country. The purpose of this study is to explore whether boosting the productivity of agriculture, services and industry sector is the possible channel of competitiveness leading to growth. Design/methodology/approach For this, panel GMM moderator model has been used for 16 low-income countries. Findings The results indicate that competitiveness helps agriculture and industry sector to become more growth productive, while it reduces the productivity of services sector. Originality/value This study urges that the gains from following the competition promotion policies overweigh the costs. Hence, low-income countries can break the low productivity trap.

World Health Organization (WHO) manage health-related statistics all around the world by taking the necessary measures. What could be better for health and what may be the leading causes of deaths, all these statistics are well organized by WHO. Burn Injuries are mostly viewed in middle and low-income countries due to lack of resources, the result may come in the form of deaths by serious injuries caused by burning. Due to the non-accessibility of specialists and burn surgeons, simple and basic health care units situated at tribble areas as well as in small cities are facing the problem to diagnose the burn depths accurately. The primary goals and objectives of this research task are to segment the burnt region of skin from the normal skin and to diagnose the burn depths as per the level of burn. The dataset contains the 600 images of burnt patients and has been taken in a real-time environment from the Allied Burn and Reconstructive Surgery Unit (ABRSU) Faisalabad, Pakistan. Burnt human skin segmentation was carried by the use of Otsu's method and the image feature vector was obtained by using statistical calculations such as mean and median. A classifier Deep Convolutional Neural Network based on deep learning was used to classify the burnt human skin as per the level of burn into different depths. Almost 60 percent of images have been taken to train the classifier and the rest of the 40 percent burnt skin images were used to estimate the average accuracy of the classifier. The average accuracy of the DCNN classifier was noted as 83.4 percent and these are the best results yet. By the obtained results of this research task, young physicians and practitioners may be able to diagnose the burn depths and start the proper medication.

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This study highlights the obstacles which limit the penetration of the banking sector in the field of Islamic microfinance in Pakistan, keeping in view the practitioners' perspective as to how these obstacles can be overcome. In Pakistan, where approximately sixty percent (60%) of the population is living below the international poverty line, Islamic microfinance has the potential to play a vital role in alleviating poverty. Unfortunately, the banking sector of Pakistan is reluctant to contribute in Islamic microfinance due to some limitations from the bankers' perspective. Qualitative approach has been followed in this study in which semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-six participants from all over Pakistan, including five from Islamic, seven from conventional, thirteen from microfinance and one from an Islamic microfinance bank. Interviews were conducted with the board of directors, Sharīʿah board members, senior management, and microfinance heads. According to the experts, the mindset of bankers, lack of collateral, weak role of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the government of Pakistan in setting targets, limited availability of sector targeted products, lack of customer awareness, lack of initial capital, time consumption and documentation problems are among the issues faced by the banking sector. These experts emphasized the crucial role of the SBP and government support to promote Islamic microfinancing through banks. State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) as regulator and other commercial banks, Islamic microfinance banks and their boards of