March 18, 2003	Tuesday	Muharram 14, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, March 17: The federal government, to avoid overlapping with the jurisdiction of district governments, has decided that the MNAs’ development fund will be utilized for execution of schemes only in four areas of infrastructure.

This was disclosed by the deputy chairman, Planning Commission, Dr Shahid Amjad Chaudhry, during his inaugural speech at a symposium on pro-poor growth policies, jointly organized by Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) and United National Development Programme on Monday.

The areas in which the amount of Rs5 million in the current financial year and Rs10 million in the subsequent years will be spent on schemes recommended by an MNA like gas, rural electricity, telephones and rural roads.

As the schemes will be implemented by the relevant departments, any possible irregularity in the utilization of these funds would be obviated, he added.

Talking to this reporter, Mr Chaudhry said the rural road schemes would be executed by the PWD after obtaining approval from the local government concerned.

The symposium, he stated, had been organized to elicit views on the causes of rise in poverty in Pakistan. He said the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) had been prepared through an elaborate consultative process.

There was nothing rigid about the scheme and it was open to suggestions as to whether the areas focused in the PRSP, namely, social sector, primary education, preventing health, women’s uplift and rural water supply constituted appropriate approach to reduction of poverty.

The Public Sector Development Programme allocations would be raised from Rs161 billion in 2002-03 to Rs180 million next and further to Rs200 billion in 2003-04. This fund would be divided between social sector and infrastructure on 50:50 basis.

The UNDP resident representative, Onder Yucer, said the UN Millennium Summit held in September 2000 had committed the international community to half extreme poverty by 2015.

For growth to become more ‘pro-poor’, it should aim at improving the absolute condition of the poor, preferably by achieving greater equity at the start of the growth process.

“Determined efforts were needed to avoid growth that is jobless, ruthless, voiceless, rootless and futureless,” he stressed.

Pakistan, he went on to remark, was faced with twin challenges of reviving growth and reducing inequality.

Mr Yucer pointed to a study of 192 countries which concluded that only 16 per cent of the growth was explained by physical infrastructure, while 20 per cent came from natural capital. But, no less than 64 per cent can be attributed to human capital.

Governor of State Bank of Pakistan Dr Ishrat Husain, while speaking on ‘Macro-economic Policy Framework and Poverty Reduction’, said he agreed with earlier speakers on the need to reduce poverty, but not on the reduction in growing inequality.

He said the critics of globalization wore blinkers because they did not see the benefits of liberalization of trade. But, Dr Aqdas Kazmi, a senior officer of the Planning Commission, pointed out that China had scored record economic growth rates while maintaining high protection walls.

The PIDE director, Dr A.R. Kemal, while tracing the poverty trends over the 35-year period upto 1999, said the growth did not necessarily trickle down to the poor and that poverty reduction depended crucially on employment generation.

Former federal finance minister Sartaj Aziz, while expressing his skepticism about the success of the PRSP approach because of its apparent short horizon, proposed the adoption of a 10-year poverty reduction programme in conjunction with an investment programme and a public administration reform programme for 10-year period.

He did not agree with the assertion by the SBP governor that macroeconomic stability could translate into higher growth. He noted that investment had dropped from 20 per cent in the early 1990s to about 13 per cent.

Dr Akmal Hussain, an economist, identified the methods for alleviation of poverty through income generation based on gainful employment.

A policy of pro-poor growth, he said, would involve restructuring the macroeconomic growth on the one hand and local structures of power in favour of the poor on the other.

He joined other experts in their stress on introduction of land reforms in view of the fact that 50 per cent of the rural people were poor.

Over 40 per cent of the tenants, Dr A.R.Kemal pointed out, worked on the landlords’ fields without any wages, while the rest were paid less than 65 per cent of the prevailing wages.

Dr Husain said the pride in four per cent agricultural growth, expressed by a senior government functionary, was misplaced. This was because main crops accounted for three to 3.3 per cent growth, while the rest was due to livestock.

Chairman of the National Commission for Human Development Dr Nasim Ashraf said a poverty reduction programme should also include programme for preventing poverty due to sickness.