Poverty Reduction: Prescriptions discussed at workshop

"Punjab government is making all out efforts to alleviate poverty in the province," chief economist Arif Anwar Baloch


Express December 19, 2011

LAHORE: The Punjab government is making all out efforts to alleviate poverty in the province said chief economist Arif Anwar Baloch. He was speaking at a workshop on Poverty Reduction Strategy, organised by Punjab Poverty Reduction Strategy Monitoring, a project of the United Nations Development Programme. Development practitioners and civil society representatives attended the workshop at a local hotel. Bunyad chairperson Shaheen Attiqueur Rehman, Punjab Economic Research Institute director general Abdul Quddus and Punjab Bureau of Statistics Director General Shamim Rafique a press release said. Economist Haroon Jamal from the Social Policy and Development Centre Karachi discussed various dimensions of poverty. It was agreed that at a micro level of poverty reduction, development of human capital, universal education, vocational training, population control, safety nets, social insurance in health and employment should be ensured. At a macro level, pro-poor economic growth needed to be accelerated so that employment opportunities were generated, Jamal said. The participants agreed that direct taxation was beneficial to alleviating poverty as indirect taxation was a burden on consumers. Development expenditure, domestic and foreign investment, land reforms, agriculture diversification and non-farm employment were identified as recipes for poverty reduction.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20th, 2011.

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