Challenges to come

[HASEEB ANSARI]

Challenges to come
By M Zaidi

Though Pakistan’s rate of economic growth has been deemed satisfactory by some analysts, compared with other developing countries, this has not resulted in improved development outcomes. For instance, even though poverty rates fell during 2002-06, relative inequality amongst regions offsets these growth rates. Pakistan is not expected to meet the Millennium Development Goal targets on primary enrolment, child mortality, maternal mortality, eradicating certain infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria, and water and sanitation.
Regarding absolute poverty, the number of households living on less than $1.25 per day has, indeed, fallen from 48 per cent in 1997 to 21 per cent in 2008. Poverty rates have also fallen from 16 per cent in 2008/09 to 11 per cent in 2010/11. However, these figures are contentious, as official figures are sometimes doubted due to methodological issues.
Even though there have been some improvements in indicators such as child and maternal mortality and life expectancy, the maternal and child mortality rates are the second-highest in South and Central Asia. This translates into poor access and low status of women in Pakistan, whose levels of education, low levels of employment and limited independence present barriers to accessing health services. Some 68 per cent of rural women still give birth at home.
Pakistan’s efficacy in handling infectious diseases is also not good, with over 50 per cent of health spending in Pakistan done by individuals themselves. Household surveys have indicated unexpected health bills to be the biggest shock hitting poor households, perceived as more traumatic than conflict or natural disasters.
Education shows a deplorable condition, with the proportion of 2.4 per cent of GDP spending on education being minutely higher that it was in the early 1970s and well below the regional average. A drive to increase primary enrolment has stalled due to a lack of trained and motivated teachers. The education sector suffers from weak governance, management and accountability. In its 2010-13 Partnership Strategy, the World Bank commented that “the quality of education is weak at all levels … drop out rates are high, and learning achievements are low and varied.”
Nearly 25 per cent of seven to 16-year-olds have no formal education at all, and even for these who do attain some sort of education, two-thirds of school leavers in rural areas fail to achieve basic literacy, with gaping disparities in primary school enrolment and literacy.
Food insecurity is rising; shortages occurring in 2008 and 2009 saw food riots, such as the stampede in Karachi, where in order to access free sacks of rice, 20 women and girls were crushed to death. Although the prices of staple foods, such as wheat flour and rice, are showing downward trends, they remain 59 per cent higher than their five-year average.
Only 62 per cent of Pakistanis have electricity, although access to this does not mean that they will not face severe shortages. Power outages have escalated in intensity in recent years and an unreliable supply remains a major obstacle to economic growth and competitiveness. Cuts of up to 20 hours have led to street protests in major cities. The actual problem is management of distribution and subsidy, with the government subsidising the cost of electricity by paying distribution companies the difference between the cost of production and the intended price. This has caused the fiscal burden of maintaining a subsidy for end-consumers to become substantial and the government has struggled to meet its pledges to make subsidy payments, which, in turn, has left distributors in arrears to suppliers. This has resulted in the network of government-managed and private energy suppliers, generators and distributors to become weighed down by intra-corporate debt.
This is the myriad of challenges that any government coming into power will face, and political slogans will not make these problems go away. Only the most concerted and sincerest effort will enable Pakistan to overcome these, by now, seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 5th, 2013.