04 August 2004	Wednesday	17 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425

ISLAMABAD, Aug 3: The experiences with poverty alleviation across Asia have been "disappointing" due mainly to the ill- defined criteria for categorisation as poor, poorly designed programmes and elite capture, says a report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Summarising the discussions held at a seminar, it said the experiences of the past 20 years had lessons for Pakistan. The seminar had been organised by the ADB in association with the ADB Institute (ADBI) and the Government of Pakistan here recently.

The second of a series of seminars launched last year with a view to disseminating 'best practice' thinking in selected policy areas of relevance to government and civil society, its topic was "poverty targeting".

Dr Ashfaque H. Khan, Economic Adviser and Director-General of the DEBT Office, represented the government in the seminar, which, not unexpectedly, ignored the neo-liberal policies prescribed by the ADB and Brettonwoods Institutions as the main factor contributing to the relentless rise in poverty through unemployment, increases in prices of basic necessities of life etc.

It was widely recognised by the participants that poverty reduction required a combination of sustained economic growth and selected interventions designed to improve the position of the poor.

Poverty targeting, defined as the use of policy instruments to channel resources to vulnerable target groups among those identified as living below an agreed poverty line, is used by all governments in Asia in one form or another either to 'protect' the poor from adverse shocks or 'promote' their long-run move out of poverty.

Pakistan, it was observed, was currently experiencing high GDP growth rates and it was important to consider the use of poverty targeting programmes as a means of ensuring that even the poorest groups in society benefited from such economic growth.

Dr Syed Naveed Hamid, Senior Economic Advisor, ADB, pointed out that this was time to discuss poverty targeting programmes in Pakistan as such programmes were an important part of the government's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP).