Mini-Marshall Plan!

The proposed $20 billion World Bank funding for Pakistan aims to improve health, education, and climate over 10 years.

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The proposed $20 billion funding from the World Bank for a sustained period of 10 years is no less than a watershed development. As a first-of-its-kind programme, intended to revive social indicators in Pakistan, all it needs is stringent implementation and ensuring that it remains free from political and bureaucratic meddling. The 'Pakistan Country Partnership Framework 2025-35' is aimed at upgrading the indices in six areas: heath, education, food and nutrition, family planning, rationalisation of expenditure, and climate change.

The ambitious, but socio-economically correct, strategy from the international lender has simply underscored the necessity of bringing the poverty stricken segments of society on a par with others. While Pakistan's conventional budget paradigm is loaded with debt-servicing, civil and military bureaucracy sustenance, little is left for vital sectors of health and education as well as human and infrastructure development. Moreover, the constant that the country has been mired in instability with a lack of policy sustainability has slid it into the abyss of regression and degeneration. Thus, we have horrifying statistics such as more than 25 million children being out of school, and only 36% and 58% of people having access to safe drinking water and sanitation, respectively. The bottom line is that more than 50% of the population is below the poverty level with an income of less than $3 a day.

The deal, if signed into an accord on January 14, will be no less than a mini-Marshall Plan. It promises 54 million people receiving quality health and nutrition; 18 million women having access to contraceptives; and 60 million people being provided with water, sanitation and hygiene services. Similarly, it will target about 12 million children for better education in the next 10 years, apart from reducing child stunting by 30%. Given to understand that the World Bank will be generous enough to pour in another $20 billion with the private sector makes it a bonanza of sorts at a time when the chips are down and the government is checkmated on the economic front.