STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENTS:

Structural adjustment programs are often beneficial . There is the rethinking of poverty alleviation strategies which is required . However as long as the root causes of poverty at the upper levels remain intact, poverty cannot be solved using one blanket approach -- providing everyone with soft loans. The international donor community, including the World Bank and Asian Development Bank continue showering people with micro-credit expecting them to recover and show an increased consumption rate.

The international donor community is generally insensitive to the context of our poverty problems and continues to judge the situation according to the macroeconomic management --which speaks only about fiscal and monetary policies whose instruments, ultimately, are loans and interest.

We have to rethink our strategy in poverty alleviation, we have to study and develop the potential to overcome our poverty, which seems to have expanded as well as deepened, because of the lack of a comprehensive approach; following donor's agenda without its relevance to the local conditions; high social, political and economic inequality, and high inflation relative to rise in income for fixed income groups.