02 October 2004	Saturday	16 Shaban 1425

ISLAMABAD, Oct 1: Private-public sector partnership is vital to sustainable development and poverty alleviation in the country.

This was stated by Federal Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub Khan in his opening remarks at the launch of a two-day congress on "Attacking Poverty through Public Private Partnerships".

The event had been organized by the Human Recourse Development Network at a local hotel on Friday. Mr Khan represented Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz who could not attend the congress as chief guest due to his official engagements.

More than 500 delegates, from both public and private sector organizations, were present on the occasion. The minister said the government attached priority to improving the infrastructure in the country. It would also focus primarily on access to justice, education and health, he added.

"In this regard, the government has allocated substantial funds to provide speedy justice to the people. The prime minister has also sought recommendations in this regard from his law and justice minister," Mr Khan said.

About poverty alleviation, he said, representatives of different organizations should sit together before finalizing any project in specific areas, following the pattern of citizens' community boards in the West. It would help make proper planning for any project, benefiting the whole community.

The minister said poverty level went up during the 90s because the private sector lost confidence in the public sector. Federal Minister for Industries and Production Jehangir Khan Tareen, who was also present on the occasion, talked about Sugarcane Productivity Enhancement Programme which, he said, benefited scores of women and men in finding employment.

M Ali Shah, country director of Asian Development Bank, said the bank had been engaged with private sector institutions for the last 20 years. The bank has also been involved in sub-sectors of leasing, financial services and infrastructural development, he said.

He said ADB's partnership with NGOs had increased manifold in the recent past. The bank is now working with about 100 NGOs on different projects. The ADB, he said, strongly believed in private-public partnership as these sectors could not fight poverty in their individual capacities.

Some of the recent projects launched in this area included capital market development programme, financial (non- banking) markets, governance programme, access to justice programme, Punjab resource management programme, and provincial road sector development programme, he added.

Dr Akmal Hussain, who has written the Pakistan National Development Report 2003, said people were poor because they lived in fragmented communities, while Pakistan also had asymmetric market structure.

Baela Raza Jamil, technical adviser to the education ministry, focused on public-private partnerships in education sector. Gareth Aiken, chief executive of Department for International Development, called for creating an environment of trust between the private and public sectors. He was of the view that both the public and private sectors had to make concerted efforts if Pakistan wanted to catch up with the developing world.