ISLAMABAD, July 5: The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) will provide a grant of $626,471 to Pakistan for analyzing federal and provincial governments’ budgets to determine the extent to which resources are being allocated to address gender inequality. In this regard, a Gender Responsive Budgeting Initiative (GRBI) project was signed here on Tuesday by Swiss Ambassador Denis Feldmeyer and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative Haoliang Xu. Officials from economic affairs division and the ministry of women development were also present on the occasion.

The Swiss ambassador said we considered our support to the GRBI project very relevant to the need to promote equality of access to public sector expenditures in Pakistan.

Moreover, the GRBI is a timely initiative as it is in line with the recent decision of the SDC’s management to apply gender responsive budgeting within the agency. Our support to the GRBI in Pakistan is, therefore, seen as a pioneering effort, he added.

Speaking on the occasion, Haoliang Xu said the United Nations Development Programme expected that this initiative would not only have a positive impact on the governments’ policy interventions in the sector, but also influence the internal processes such as allocation of resources and the review of government expenditure.

The project is a pilot initiative with the ministry of finance with an approved budget of $1 million for a period of two-and-a-half years.

It will assist the Pakistan government to develop skills to prepare, review and analyse budgets through the gender lens; promoting policy and resource allocation with a gender perspective; and building advocacy skills of the government officials and civil society organizations in gender budgeting.

Initially, the project will focus its research on the health, education and population sectors of the federal budget and the Punjab provincial budget. At district level, Gujrat and Rajanpur budgets will be reviewed.

In pursuance of the goals of this project, training of government officials at the federal, provincial and district levels in gender budgetary analysis, and research will be conducted; training curriculum, guidebooks and other tools will be developed and subsequently shared with all stakeholders.

This initiative is part of the UNDP’s larger gender support programme, which is supported by the Royal Norwegian Embassy.

The Canadian government has also provided cost sharing support to one of the GSP projects, which is the gender mainstreaming through the planning and development division and departments.