World Anti-Crisis Plan: Experts endorse document to mitigate global issue

Ambitious targets, strategies proposed to tackle economic and financial problems.

ISLAMABAD: Financial wizards have termed the ‘World Anti-Crisis Plan’ a comprehensive document that can be built upon to overcome the multidimensional challenges posed by the global financial crisis.

They were speaking at a seminar on ‘Dealing with Global Financial Crisis – ‘World Anti-Crisis Plan’’ at the Institute of Policy Studies here on Friday.

The event was chaired by former chief economist of the Planning Commission Fasihuddin and addressed by the institute’s director general and economists Khalid Rahman, Sakib Sherani, Dr Naheed Zia Khan and professor Dr Zafar Iqbal.

The sitting endorsed the plan, saying that with some modification and improvement, strategies suggested in it can help avoid a repeat of such crisis. It was, however, asserted that these steps could only mitigate the crisis, but not eliminate it entirely.

The draft of the plan will be adopted at the upcoming second UN World Anti-Crisis conference scheduled in Kazakhstan on May 21-23, according to a press release.

The document proposes ambitious targets and strategies to tackle the economic and financial problems of the world.

The economists, however, argued that what the global economy was confronted with is more than a financial crisis as the term did not reflect the true impact of the failings and resultant implications. It was not only the failings of capitalism, but also exposed the shortcomings of markets, financial institutions, states, global governance and participatory democracy.

The speakers unanimously agreed that the current global financial crisis was not merely economic but also a moral and ethical one in nature. They stressed on tapping, developing and building an alternative system upon the potential of economic ethics and values.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2014.

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