IT HAS BEEN obvious to us for some years now that enough of foreign assistance could be available for social sector development in Pakistan as well as promotion of gender equality. International aid agencies like the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the IMF who help Pakistan with funds as well as plenty of rhetoric on the urgency for social development is anxious to help Pakistan in that sector.

The issue for Pakistan is having the right priorities for social development, using the funds well and eliminating the common corruption and waste which is vital for such a programme.

The ADB has now signed an agreement to provide $2.5 billion to Pakistan to reduce the incidence of poverty to at least 15 per cent from the present 40 percent by the year 2011—nine years from now. This is certainly far more reassuring for the poor than the UN’s goal of reducing global poverty by a half by 2015.

And the UN estimates the number of the absolutely poor at 1.2 billion or one-fifth of the world’s population — with half the poor living in South Asia, while the number of the poor in China is getting less and less.

The ADB has come up with the biggest chunk of aid for poverty reduction after the IMF began that formally with a 1.4 billion Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) which began two years ago. But prior to achieving that goal, poverty was to be reduced by 25 per cent by the year 2006— four years from now —along with ensuring an economic growth rate of 5 per cent by then. In fact, the two are inter-linked as without sufficient economic growth poverty cannot be reduced in our kind of conditions with the vested interests holding on to whatever they have and wanting more.

If the 5 per cent growth is ensured by 2006, the 6 per cent growth target set along with the goal of reducing poverty to at least 15 per cent by the year 2011 can be achieved.

But to ensure that the package for reducing poverty to 15 per cent the economic agenda accepted by the government and put in practice now should be implemented in full and not be derailed after the October elections. If that is done earnestly more social sector development funds can be available and if instead the reform agenda is derailed, the aid committed for poverty reduction can shrink substantially and in this area the three major international agencies will work together to ensure that the aid given by them for social sector development in Pakistan does not go down the drain because of waste or misuse.

The social sector development is marked for the misuse of funds or their embezzlement including the funds allocated for the Social Action Programmes I and II.

In fact if the money allocated for poverty reduction and social sector development is well used far more funds can become available for that purpose. Canada has said it will be ready to convert its loan of around $400 million into social sector development funds. The Netherlands and Norway which attach a great deal of importance to social sector development will also follow suit with increasing loan funds. Now the Western countries and aid agencies attach a great deal of importance to educating the women as an educated mother is regarded as a key to happy and healthy families particularly in respect of reducing the number of children and sending the children to schools. But in the past such programmes had been vitiated by corruption which lead to ghost schools, ghost teachers, ghost hospitals, ghost doctors, etc.

The question is whether the MNA’s and MPA’s programme will be revived and new school buildings will be used as guest houses of the legislators or cattle sheds if they are badly built as a result of excessive corruption?

The federal government now says the provincial governments are free to obtain loans from international agencies and foreign donors, but their utilization will be overseen by the federal government. In fact the aid agencies are likely to be far more vigilant so that what happened in the past is not repeated and while the aid is wasted, a large debt burden is not built up. Central and provincial governments cannot hide behind the slogan of sovereignty and perpetuate corruption with borrowed funds.

It was in the 1990’s that poverty reduction and social sector development became major agenda’s of the international agencies and it was in the same decade that Pakistan was declared by Transparency International, Berlin, as the second, third and fifth most corrupt country in different years. And now if our rank has improved relatively it is not because we have become far less corrupt, but as far more corrupt countries of Africa, Latin America and Asia are topping the list and crowding us out to a lower rank. Added to that is the fact that few foreign investors have been coming to Pakistan from whom kickbacks can be demanded.

Poverty reduction is now far more than giving some money through the Zakat funds or Baitul Maal or some food grains. It includes education to enable the poor to earn more and acquire new skills, public health and a clean environment. Professor Amaritya Sen, the Nobel Prize winner, has been underscoring this fact emphatically.

Finally what is obtained in the name of the poor must be spent on them along with supplementary funds of our own and not pocketed. That would mean a radical departure from the past. But after the number of our poor has touched 40 per cent of the population, we have no option save fight poverty resolutely and consistently.

Meanwhile the ADB has updated its report and placed the annual growth figure for the current year at 3.6 per cent instead of the earlier 3 per cent because of the agricultural growth, which is indeed very reassuring.