January 24, 2007	Wednesday	Muharram 04, 1428

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ISLAMABAD, Jan 23: The government has informed international donors that it would take at least five years to implement the second-generation reforms agenda relating to the civil service, police and judiciary.

Officials said the other day that the process had been delayed because of ‘serious difficulties’ and the government would not be able to enforce it during the current year.

The sources said that the second-generation reforms needed huge financial resources in addition to laying-off thousands of people to trim the waist of the bureaucracy, which would be ‘politically unpopular’.

The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), sources said, were urging the government to carry out the reforms which had been delayed despite receiving adequate foreign funding. ADB has already offered $350 million assistance for judicial reforms.

Officials conceded that the pace of judicial reform process had been too slow and needed to be accelerated by the government and the superior judiciary.

“The government cannot offer the fruits of improved economy to the common man in the absence of the second-generation reforms”, an official said.

First-generation reforms, he said, were carried out to rationalise utility prices, fiscal deficit, financial sector, National Tariff Commission, SECP, stock market, deregulation, privatisation, market liberalisation and devolution.

The source said that the World Bank had prepared three reports on Pakistan’s civil service reforms and handed them over to the government for implementation.

The bank’s fourth report, he said, was about to come out on the same issue but without any result.

“This is very disturbing for the World Bank, which believes that no real change in Pakistan can be brought without undertaking and completing the second-generation reforms,” the source said.

Former senior official of the Planning Commission and ex- Director of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) Commenting on the situation, Dr A.R.Kamal regretted that serious reforms had not yet been undertaken by the government because of one reason or the other.