Pakistan’s
experience with MDGs, like most developing countries, remains mixed. The
country is ahead or on track to achieve several targets related to women,
health and the environment. These include targets such as proportion of women
in parliament, availability of female health workers, children with access to
ORT, HIV and TB indicators, use of CNG and land area for wildlife protection.
However, there are many indicators on which Pakistan lags -- unfortunately,
Pakistan is off-track in one of the most important indicators, namely, infant
mortality.
There
seems to be a clear disconnect between the macro and micro economic performance
in the country. For example, while education and health coverage has improved
in absolute terms, there is still a decline in medium and long run economic
growth rates. Similarly, while allocations towards education and health have
increased, disbursement (relative to GDP) has declined. Further, rising per
capita incomes are not matched by increasing access to basic services.
Pakistan’s
limited success with meeting the MDG can be attributed to uncoordinated
implementation, lack of local capacity in terms of human and financial
resources, affecting service delivery, and dearth of fiscal discipline,
contributing towards diversion of pro-poor expenditures into other uses. This
is evidenced by recent cuts in public sector development programs in education
and health and fund diversion towards short term cash-based social safety nets
and to elected representatives for discretionary spending in their own
constituencies. Further, the past list of MDGs was not comprehensive enough to
address the challenges faced by Pakistan. Issues that were severely neglected
include food security, climate change and a comprehensive strategy for youth
engagement. As the government decides to embrace the post-2015 development
agenda, new goals should focus on local level governance, accountability
measures at all administrative tiers, and pro-poor investments. Measures that
trace community abilities that demand and use of social services could also be
tracked.
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