KARACHI, May 2: The international donor community has “cautioned” Pakistan against “playing politics” with the reform programme.
“On the eve of the October elections,” this caution has been reinforced by World Bank (WB) vice-president for South Asia Region, Mieko Nishimizu observation that this government and the democratic one to come, should “never forget that the people’s trust is still young, fragile and can be broken by one misstep—one inconsistency between words and actions.”
Addressing the Pakistan Development Forum (PDF), which concluded in Paris on Tuesday she was voicing the sentiments of the country’s international development partners who sent a “unanimous message” to Islamabad “to continue to deepen and accelerate its recent reforms efforts.”
The WB press release coincided with the holding of national referendum on April 30.
In a separate IMF review report compiled in March-April on implementation of Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) programme, the Fund officials have also expressed concerns over the future of reforms.
“With the political environment changing as Pakistan edges closer to parliamentary elections and the presence of new and untested local government, some of the most difficult structural reforms as well as the pursuit of fiscal adjustment may face stronger resistance,” says the IMF report.
According to a WB press release, the donors have also urged the authorities to ensure that “the central budgeting documents should reinforce the political reforms of decentralization so far and put real expenditure power and choice in the hands of locally elected officials.”
The IMF review has noted that the government has not yet announced as to how the tax and other revenues would be shared between the federation, provinces and the district governments. The current National Finance Commission Award is to expire by end of June this year and the new NFC award is to be effective from July next.
For the first time, non-governmental organizations attended the Development Forum meeting. The Transparency International (TI) was a special guest. It has just completed an assessment of Pakistan’s anti-corruption activities at the invitation of the government.
The TI representative Dr. Michasel Wiehen told the meeting that “the TI mission received uniformly the message that the corruption at the top levels of the government has very significantly declined but at the middle and lower levels of the government apparatus, corruption still thrives unabated.”
Dr. Wiehen, however, acknowledged that the present government has sent very clear signals that it is determined to fight corruption and has taken a number of significant steps towards that end.
Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz has asked TI to help Pakistan fight white collar crimes, especially in the area of money laundering.
The PDF meeting also heard presentations from the government on its governance reform programme and its plans for human development. In this context, the WB press release quotes the finance minister’s oft-repeated observation on performance of former civilian governments.
The decade of 1990s had been Pakistan’s “long and harsh winter”, a period during which growth declined from above
6 per cent to less than 4 per cent and poverty stagnated at over 30 per cent, says the WB release.
Shaukat Aziz was also quoted as saying that “there is no turning back and no U-turn “in response to the donors advice to continue to deepen and quicken its Pakistan’s reform efforts.