Category Archives: Economy

Larger allocations to help education and health sectors

Archive Edition, Children and Youth, Economy, Education, Health, Human Rights, Population, Social Issues, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

AN UNUSUAL feature of the Federal Finance Minister’s budget speech on Thursday was the emphasis he placed on the need to develop the social sector in Pakistan, especially education.

His professed concern at the poor state of this sector was expressed in the shape of enormous increases in allocations for some of the social sector items in the Budget.

This is significant, given the poor performance of the Government in the fields of health and education — none of the Sixth Plan targets in these fields could be met in the first two years.

It has been clear that the major factor responsible for this state of affairs has been the paucity of resources made available to the social sector. In terms of budgetary allocations, the pace of implementation of the Sixth Plan has also been painfully slow. Only 23 per cent of the planned amount was spent on education and 27 per cent on health in the first two years of the Sixth Plan period. Continue reading Larger allocations to help education and health sectors →

Saving habits: cultural factors are decisive

Archive Edition, Culture and the Arts, Development and Poverty, Economy, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

Pakistan’s saving rate betrays its people’s weakness for spending. The nation manages to save only five per cent of its gross domestic product — a figure much lower than in most other Third World countries. The saving rate in India is 20 per cent. It’s 30 per cent in Indonesia and 28 per cent in China and Nigeria.

But in spite of their notoriety for ostentatious living and wasteful habits, it is wrong to think that people in this country do not set aside any of their earnings for the proverbial rainy day. And those who do not manage to save despite their best efforts worry about their inability to save. Continue reading Saving habits: cultural factors are decisive →

Education sector: shortfall on development side alarming

Archive Edition, Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Economy, Education

By Zubeida M ustaf a

THE Sixth Five-Year Plan describes education as “a vital investment in human resources development.” It concedes that the performance of the education sector in Pakistan has remained “utterly deficient.”

In a bid to correct this deficiency, the government has adopted a strategy which seeks to increase the funds allocated to education, to change the distribution of available resources among various subsectors — so that there is greater expansion of primary and technical education while spending on higher education is kept down — and to place greater emphasis on female education.

Now that the first year of the Sixth Plan is over, it should be an instructive exercise to evaluate the government’s education policy especially with a view to ascertaining as to what extent its professed guidelines have been adhered to. Continue reading Education sector: shortfall on development side alarming →

Population planning suffers due to poor efforts

Archive Edition, Economy, Education, Population, Social Issues, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

IT IS to state the obvious that Pakistan‘s population could do with some planning. According to the 1981 census the annual population growth rate of the country is 3.1 per cent which gives Pakistan the dubious distinction of having one of the fastest multiplying population in the world.

Mercifully, it is now being noted in official quarters that without an effective programme to control the galloping population growth rate, economic development can be reduced to a farce. Thus Dr. Mahbubul Haq, Federal Minister for Planning and Development, recently observed, that during the next 16 years an estimated increase of 60 million in the population was expected.

To meet the need of these extra people alone, the country would have to produce goods worth Rs. 12 billion, generate 150 MW of electricity, set up 120,000 additional primary and 5,000 secondary schools, train 300 additional doctors and 5,000 nurses. Continue reading Population planning suffers due to poor efforts →

PQLI: A new yardstick to replace ‘per capita income’

Archive Edition, Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Economy, Education, Health, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

THERE was a time when the sole yardstick to measure the level of development of a country was the conventional economic indicator, namely, the per capita income. But economists have now discovered the fallacy of this approach. A country can have a high per capita GNP and yet be severely underdeveloped in terms of the quality of life it can provide to its people.

Very often the national wealth happens to be concentrated in the hands of a few people and the Government’s priorities are such that the social sectors are totally neglected. In such cases the GNP can be quite misleading for it hardly reflects the level of development of the people. Hence economists have come to adopt the basic needs approach and now more emphasis is placed on the social sectors, especially education and health. Thus the conventional economic indicators are no longer the only measure of national development. Continue reading PQLI: A new yardstick to replace ‘per capita income’ →