International Financial Institution (IFIs), powerful military and elite of the country have formed a nexus to safeguard each other's interests and to facilitate neo-liberal agenda of global powers.
This was the crux of a roundtable titled Ample Dollars in the Kitty but Poor getting Poorer organized in Islamabad by ActionAid-Pakistan under its governance portfolio that tracks International Financial Institutions (IFIs) powerful role to influence policies to adversely impact livelihoods and rights of millions of people. This roundtable discussion took place as a parallel event to the meeting of Pakistan Development Forum (PDF) which was scheduled to be held on 10-11 May, 2006.
PDF is rendezvous for the major providers of credit and international economic assistance where delegates from the World Bank, IMF, Asian Development Bank and other bilateral donors (basically lenders in the disguise of donors) get there to attend their annual ritual.
Opening the roundtable discussion, Tasleem Mazhar of Action Aid-Pakistan said socio-economic and human development indicators show that Pakistan is going backwards especially in the areas of human development and poverty eradication. She said the government is trying to show progress by maneuvering the facts. She said the current national poverty line, which is Rs.748, enables government to show very low incidence of poverty in Pakistan and by using this sort of tactics it is easy for government officials to present a minimized number of poor population below the poverty line i.e. 33%. But this kind of object measurement of poverty can never provide the real dimensions and incidence of poverty.
Dr. Tasneem Sidiqui, a renowned social scientist and human rights activist, criticized the government for not having proper mechanism to collect accurate data/statistics to measure poverty. He highlighted major flaw in governments calculation of income and expenditures of a poor citizen as the government measures the expenditures on the basis of the consumption of the food only and the other major expenditures such as utility bills, transport expenditures, education, health and lots of other expenditures are not included while working out poverty lines and minimum income for a family. He said the living conditions are also worsening day by day, 60% of urban population in Pakistan is living in slums or slums like localities. He further articulated that the poverty doesn't only have social dimension, the political process essentially plays a vital role to shape life of the poor.
Dr. Rubina Saigol, the country director Actionaid Pakistan, said the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) was introduced by IFIs in disguise of the so-called Reforms under which certain conditionalities were attached to the lending process. These conditionalities include privatization, trade liberalization and devaluation of currency. She said the privatization left thousands of people jobless in the name of so-called downsizing and rightsizing. She said the economic conditionalities are a major cause of violation of human rights. State is getting away with its basic role to provide its citizens with essential services and IFIs as tools are facilitating global powers to colonize the world, she added.
Khadim Hussain said the Structural Adjustment Programs and Social Action Programs have basically been plunging us into deep poverty rather leading us to prosperity. He said that these programs have been ill-planed and they have many gray-areas and flaws. He further said that we have become prisoners of IFIs as they are so intricately involved in our systems and they are in total consent with bureaucracy and dictators. All the institutions of the government make such plans which can gain them maximum benefits and nothing is being used for the betterment of the poor citizens of the country. The affectees of two mega development projects such as National Drainage programme (NDP) and Tuansa Barrage Emergency Rehabilitation and Modernization Project (TBERMP) funded by World Bank presented the case studies that highlight loss of their livelihoods and socio-economic option. The case studies also speak of ecological and environmental impacts of these disastrous mega development projects.
Harris Khalique said the elites of this country along with the government and IFIs have captured all resources and are extracting all the benefits. And because of this nexus benefits are not distributed among the poor or economic growth is not trickled down to the poor and marginalized sections of society. He said Pakistan is a unique example where in the name of 'national interest' a specific economic class backed by IFIs in the absence of an effective political system is exploiting other classes.
