Poverty Level Declining: Pakistan-India CBMs boost Investment: PM
By M D Malik - Pakistan Times Federal Bureau Chief

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz Friday said confidence building measures with India have boosted investment in the country and the effects of economic growth started to trickle down to the common man.

“The growth is beginning to trickle down and poverty levels are declining,” he told a gathering at the launching of Pakistan Millennium Development Goals Report - 2004 (PMDG).

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said “Improved internal security and confidence building measures initiated with our neighbour has boosted investment by local and foreign investors (in the country).”

He said the reform process of the past five years and the turnaround in Pakistan’s economic performance in the last 3 years was encouraging. This he said makes the prospects of attaining the Millennium Development Goal much brighter. “We can’t change the past, but the government of President Musharraf, and I remain committed to the future,” he said.

The country’s economy, he said, shows promising sign of breaking the low-level equilibrium trap it was engulfed in prior to 1999. It is now performing in the range of 7% and will attain 8% growth within 2 to 3 years.

He said the country will witness the highest cotton production of almost 15 million bales in its history and with the recent rains a bumper wheat crop is expected. He said yield of other ancillary crops had also increased. The increasing yield, he added has a direct impact on improving the poverty level in rural areas.

“All this augurs well for creating sizeable fiscal space for human development and undertake infrastructure development to generate employment and further reduce poverty,” he said. He however called for focussing more on the dairy and the livestock sectors, as the potential for earnings was very high.

The Prime Minister said the rate of progress for quality of life indicators needs improvement. Referring to the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) he said, the expenditures in the last two years increased by more than 50%, up from Rs. 167 billion in 2001-02 to Rs. 254 billion in 2003-04.

The pro-poor expenditures are expected to rise further to Rs. 278 billion in the current fiscal year. The allocation to education sector has been the highest and apart from primary health care, the focus is on bringing clean water, sanitation, and improved nutrition throughout the country, particularly in the rural areas.

He said a comprehensive child immunization program and training and hiring of more Lady Health Workers is underway. The maternal mortality rate was improving, yet a huge difference remains when compared to many developing countries of the region.

He said vocational training and skill development programs in the country were aimed at reducing unemployment of youth and educated. Mega programs in the field of education and health are underway and many more are in the launching stage.

The Center for Research on Poverty Reduction and Income Distribution with help of Planning Commission and UNDP has been assigned the task of monitoring and evaluating progress towards MDGs and producing progress reports annually.

He, however, said any MDG based poverty reduction strategy will have to be backed by MDG based Global Partnerships. He said the commitment of allocation of 0.7% of GNP in development assistance made by donors in the 2001 Brussels Declaration needs to be recommitted.

He said so far, only five countries have met or surpassed the target. Six others have made commitments to reach the target by 2015. But 11 of the 22 richest donors according to OECD are far below the target and have not set timetables to reach it.

Aziz referred to the UN report that calculates that rich countries must dedicate about 0.5% of their combined GDP to aid to realize the goals, which is about twice what they currently offer.

“Fair trade makes free trade more pro-poor,” he said adding trade policy and trade liberalization ultimately should deal with bringing about development in the developed countries.

The Prime Minister also called for cooperation between developing countries for attaining MDGs.

The Prime Minister said, the SAARC Social Charter, SAFTA, ECOTA are part of our approach to maximize the regional prospects for development.

Prime Minister asked the Chief Ministers of the provinces to arrange similar launches of the PMDGR 2004 and create appropriate monitoring mechanism to translate government’s commitment to MDGs into actions so that people had better standards of life.●