Pakistan among only two Asian countries where poverty has stagnated(other country is Afghanistan)

Poverty still grinds huge population: WB, IMF

By Imran Ayub

KARACHI: The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have marked Pakistan as among only two Asian countries where poverty has stagnated at around one third of the population for the last decade.

The latest report released jointly by the two institutions said the Asian region has developed enough to reduce poverty rate by each of its country but Pakistan has yet to witness such windfall.

“Since 1990, the region has experienced rapid GDP growth, averaging close to 5.5 percent a year,” said says a report released on April 12 in Washington.

“This has helped to reduce the consumption poverty rate. Two notable exceptions are Pakistan, where poverty has stagnated at around one third of the population, and Afghanistan, which is emerging from decades of conflict.”

The international report came amid claims of the authorities, which said they had taken effective measures in the recent years to reduce rising poverty.

The State Bank of Pakistan in its half yearly report for 2004-05 issued a few weeks back said the economy added 2.9 million new jobs during 2003-2004, which cut the unemployment rate to 7.7 percent from previous 8.8 percent.

But, the WB and IMF both alarmed that bold and urgent action was needed to reduce extreme poverty and improve people’s economic and social prospects in developing countries in keeping with a set of key development targets, called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The international institutions warned Pakistan and Afghanistan to come up with strong measures to fight the poverty, which threatened overall economic growth of the country.

“Against this backdrop, the universal primary education, gender equality, child mortality and major disease MDGs would appear within reach of most of the countries in the region, with only Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the poorer states in India remaining off track unless progress quickens substantially,” it added.

It said among eight Asian states India, the largest country in the region with a population of more than one billion had reduced the poverty rate by 7 to 10 percentage points since 1990. Most other countries in the region registered a similarly significant reduction in poverty over the period.

The report suggested that the eight countries of South Asia were home to nearly 40 percent of the world’s poor living on less than a dollar a day, with income per capita in the order of $460. However, the bank pinpointed three places in the South Asia region, standing out with good MDG indicators of their income levels. “Sri Lanka and the Indian state of Kerala have an established pattern of good performance that reflects the priority successive post-independence governments have given to investments in human development,” said the report.

“Bangladesh’s success has owed much to an effective scaling up of basic services built in large part on a combination of effective partnerships between the public sector and NGOs and the resulting high degree of community involvement, local innovation and experimentation.”