15 January 2004	Thursday	22 Ziqa'ad 1424

ISLAMABAD, Jan 14: The prime minister's task force on poverty reduction and employment generation is likely to recommend to the government to ensure the national accounts clearly reflected the diversion of 10 per cent of proceeds from privatization to poverty reduction programmes.

Privatization and Investment Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh said here on Wednesday that the task force was considering to recommend that there should be clear reflection of privatization proceeds being utilized for poverty reduction.

Dr Sheikh, who is also chairman of the task force, was talking to reporters after presiding over the meeting of PM's task force on poverty here on the sidelines of annual conference of the Pakistan Society for Development Economics.

Under the privatization law introduced by the military government, 10 per cent of the privatization proceeds must go for poverty reduction and 90 per cent for debt retirement.

The government, however, never allowed its accounts to reflect as to where the proceeds were going. He said the task force would also be recommending focus on some new sectors which have more employment elasticity, absorb new labour force and could reduce poverty.

The task force, he said, has identified three areas to deliberate upon so that a comprehensive report could be submitted to the prime minister in the next 10 to 15 days. The areas include: the current state of poverty and unemployment and trends; what the government could do directly to combat poverty and generate employment; and what the government could do to indirectly counter poverty.

He said there could be a number of targeted programmes to reduce poverty and unemployment because there was a lot of room for further improvement although the government has launched some programmes for poverty alleviation. The task force would identify the new areas for direct government intervention, he added.

He said the government was concentrating on sustainable growth, but the task force would suggest as to what kind of growth should be focused on to generate employment and reduce poverty.

Replying to a question, he said discussions were also on to see whether the current level of spending on poverty reduction was enough and if increase in expenditure was required, how to be fiscally responsible so that a balance may be created between the macro-economic stability and growth.

He said that there was also room for fiscal improvement and capacity utilization of resources because implementation remained a big issue in Pakistan.

He said while it was necessary that existing resources should not lapse but equally important was to stop the leakages. He did not directly respond when asked whether the task force was satisfied with the current level of poverty related expenditure, but said that the fiscal space the country had achieved over the past few years should find important place for pro-poor growth.