ISLAMABAD: Speakers at a seminar asserted that it is essential for Pakistan to extricate itself from a dependant position in the capitalist world economy by devising and implementing an alternative economic paradigm to the current aid-oriented development model.
They said that the conditions imposed by the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) who are backed by rich western governments had negatively affected the already hard-pressed people of third world countries like Pakistan.
The seminar was organised by the Workers Party Pakistan (WPP) Friday at the National Press Club to coincide with and highlight the inadequacies of the upcoming gathering of bilateral and multilateral donors in Islamabad on Monday under the auspices of Pakistan Development Forum. In the upcoming meeting, another aid package for Pakistan in light of the recent floods will be discussed.
Abid Hassan Minto, President of WPP, termed the dept as a curse. He suggested that an alternative programme was required to overcome the present economic crisis while introducing structural reform. He said that the parliament should turn down the decision of Shariat appellate bench of Supreme Court against land reform. Parliament should focus on important issues rather than discussing irrelevant ones.
He said that it was a challenge for the independent judiciary led by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to implement its decisions at the rural level.
Minto laid out several steps which could form the basis of an alternative development paradigm. He stated that expenditure on defense and debt-serving (70 per cent of total government expenditure) must be slashed unequivocally.
“The revenue base must be expanded through generation of the political will to tax the otherwise exempt urban and rural rich, including private and military corporations, landed estates, traders and religious groups,” he suggested.
He further stated that financial and trade liberalisation must be stopped, to remove the uncertainties surrounding entry and exit of capital in the country - foreign investment, he held, should be mandated by law to invest in productive and job generating infrastructure. He stressed the urgent need for land reform in order to counter the immense problem of landlessness in rural areas, where around 30 million are now landless.
“The privatisation of public assets as well as universities should be halted and inefficacies in said public institutions be dealt with through the induction of workers into the management rather than selling them to the highest bidder,” he held.
Economist Mushtaq Gaadi said that IFI has proven highly destructive for Pakistan over the past few decades. He also highlighted the ecological impact of these projects on the people.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 13th, 2010.
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