The new government, which faces enormous economic challenges, has to rationalise Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) and reduce non-development expenditure to provide immediate relief to the masses, said coalition partners in the government on Thursday.
Outlining, what they called, the initial 100-day plan for the new government here at a session on 'Democratic Governance to meet the Economic Challenges confronting Pakistan" the newly elected parliamentarians of Pakistan Peoples Party, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Awami National Party (ANP) said that they have to take some drastic measures to cope with the challenges on economic front.
The session was jointly organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Strengthening Participatory Organisations (SPO) and Strengthening Democracy Through Parliamentary Development (SDPD)at a local hotel, which was moderated by senior journalist and leading anchorperson of Aaj television, Syed Talat Hussain.
For the key economic challenges to be confronted by the new coalition government, they held Musharraf-led regime responsible for the current state of economy. They have plunged Pakistan and its people into manifold crisis and miseries, they added. PML-N leader Ahsan Iqbal said previous government during last 8 years ignored structural reforms in the economy to meet the new global economic challenges.
He suggested rationalisation of PSDP and fiscal space, streamlining the imports according to the needs of the country, support to export industry, focus on new resources, cut in privileges of rulers, and focus on ignored agriculture and housing sector to revive the economy of the country.
Haji Adeel of ANP stressed the need of culture of simplicity, curb on corruption through declaration of assets, small cabinet, end to overspending of rulers, making of small dams and producing electricity on run of waters, provision of easy access to justice.
Syed Naveed Qamar of PPP sought genuine statistical inputs from experts for making rights decisions, support of the people and experts to dispel the propaganda of economic growth made by the pervious government during last eight years.
He said the new government would bring transparency in the governance. While another Parliamentarian of PPP Shahnaz Wazir Ali said that the needs of the people should drive the economy not the macro-economic indicators. Fauzia Wahab of the PPP urged awareness among people regarding the actual situation of subsidy, deficit, crises of wheat and electricity.
She considered political stability, making the industry from import-oriented to export-oriented and focus on skill and knowledge development for delivering on economic front.
Dr Pervez Tahir suggested measures for citizens' social political and economic rights, which have been alarmingly violated during last 8 years. Dr Sohail Jahangir Malik pointed out disconnection in the planning and implementation, inability of monitoring and evaluation, reliance on wrong statistical data by urging the sustained vision for economic development, prioritisation of the process, ownership of the people, known timelines, clear monitoring and evaluation under new government.
The participants also urged the need for shifting focus from foreign financial assistance to reliance on local resources and cut in overspending and un-necessary expenditures to revive the devastated economy, rationalisation of peoples' expectations and to deliver a good governance.
Comments
Comments are closed.