Poverty Reduction: Prescriptions discussed at workshop
"Punjab government is making all out efforts to alleviate poverty in the province," chief economist Arif Anwar Baloch
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.
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.