Pakistan needs rapid pro-poor growth

Leading economist Dr Sohail Jehangir Malik delivers a lecture on Pakistan current state of the economy

ISLAMABAD: Inequitable distribution of resources and power, a rapidly growing population – the majority with little or no education, skills or access to productive resources, along with widespread poverty and malnutrition, debt management crisis are a few of the causes of growing risks to socio-economic development in the country.

This was stated by leading economist Dr Sohail Jehangir Malik while delivering a special lecture on “The Current State of the Economy: Pakistan’s desperate need for rapid pro-poor growth”. The lecture had been organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) on Monday.

Dr Malik said that there was an urgent need to plan solutions for the rampant energy crisis, the looming water crisis and for the natural and manmade disasters such as floods, earthquake and drought.

If we do not give top priority to these areas, we may not expect poverty reduction and pro-poor growth which are vital for economic development in the country.

He called for increasing the ratio of the development budget to the gross domestic product (GDP) instead of cutting it down because that impacts the communities.

To provide resources for development and to implement a pro-poor growth strategy, Dr Malik called for improving revenue mobilisation by controlling corruption and inefficiencies in the tax system.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 7^th, 2019.