ISLAMABAD: A joint report of UNDP-OECD has suggested that Pakistan needs to create jobs for a quickly growing young workforce to tackle its complex security challenges and to broaden its industrial base for future sustainable development.
The 2016 ‘Monitoring Progress Report of the Global Partnership on Effective Development Cooperation’ cited example through the upcoming China-Pakistan Economic Corridor which is expected to further boost economic growth of the country.
Pakistan has sustainably improved its macroeconomic and fiscal environment through widespread reforms, while democratic governance is being consolidated, notes the report.
Based on results of the second monitoring round of the global partnership, a new batch of 10 country monitoring profiles including Pakistan has been released. With the latest batch, a total of 40 profiles are now available, highlighting country-level progress and challenges across four continents.
Since the last monitoring round for Pakistan in 2010, the proportion of development cooperation finance recorded in the government budget has dropped from 60 per cent to 34pc.
The disappointing results from this year’s monitoring round is due to reduced disbursements from the World Bank (WB) and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), which in turn, are most likely rooted in delays in achieving targets for respective tranches of concessional loans.
In the future, the government might consider paying particular attention to the capacity to adequately plan for and receive multilateral finance in the national budget in order to ensure a more consistent parliamentary control over development finance.
In the current monitoring round, five development partners of Pakistan reported disbursement of $2.573 billion in 2015. The WB contributed 62pc followed by the IDB 15pc and Japan 11pc.
The government is currently preparing a foreign assistance policy framework that will outline the joint and specific targets to further move towards an effective development cooperation.
Within a strong multilateral character of development cooperation in Pakistan, a large number of sectors are being supported, with a relative focus on agriculture, education, energy, health and emergency response, the report says.
This is first time, Pakistan has participated in the monitoring led by the Global partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, but the country was part of the 2011 monitoring of the implementation of the ‘Paris Declaration for Aid Effectiveness’.
The Paris Declaration measures progress on aid effectiveness against 12 indicators, based on five pillars. It also defines the roles and responsibilities of the government and donors partner.
