Sindh focusing on energy and public-private partnership: CM

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali has said that his government is now focusing more on energy, public-private partnership, regional development and reducing inequity in order to ensure development and progress in the province.

This he said on Wednesday while addressing the Sindh Development Forum 2018 under the banner of ‘Partnership for development towards thriving and prosperous Sindh’, organised by the Sindh Planning and Development Department at a hotel in Karachi.

Representative and country heads of international donor agencies attended the meeting. The sectors that came under discussion during the moot included education, poverty reduction, agriculture and food security, health, public finance management, water, sanitation and municipal services, nutrition, energy & infrastructure and economic growth.

Chief Minister Shah said that the last couple of years of the Pakistan Peoples Party’s government at the federal and provincial levels were part of an era of peace, progress and prosperity. “When we reigned, we faced enormous challenges of law and order, rising inequity and poverty, and weakening of the federation,” he said and added such was the level of challenges that individuals and institutions were feeling overawed and there was a general feeling of haplessness.

He said the biggest contributor to this feeling was a precarious law and order situation, which fuelled uncertainty and caused capital flight. “The capital flight fuelled poverty, which led to violence and crime, thus exacerbating poverty.”

Shah added that the key to breaking this vicious cycle was to overcome terrorism, sectarian violence and organised crime. He said they felt pride in saying that since 2013 the extent of these incidences had been brought down tremendously, and as a result, the confidence of the business community and foreign investors had improved, which was witnessed by generally improving economic conditions and keen Chinese interest in special economic zones in Sindh. “Yet another testimony is the jubilant final of the PSL in which whole Pakistan was the winner,” he said.

Talking about other challenges, Shah said one major challenge was the commodity price shock of the mid-2000s, which pushed many people, especially poor farmers, below the poverty line. He added that the right response was to come up with a social safety net and that was “what we did”.

“It is no secret that Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) is the flagship safety net in Pakistan. Starting from a social safety net, BISP has now grown into comprehensive a social protection programme,” he said and added that the programme had national socioeconomic registry, transparent criteria for beneficiary identification and targeting, and possibilities of embedding graduation strategies.

The CM maintained that this was the reason that the programme initiated for consumption smoothening was now used for a variety of socioeconomic interventions. He gave the example of Waseela-e-Sehet and Waseela-e-Taleem, Khidmet Card, programmes in this regard. “Literally all provincial governments are using the BISP for launching social and economic sectors programmes,” he said.

The CM said they knew that sustainable decline in poverty could only be realised by using bottom up approaches and that was why his government embarked on community development investment for poverty reduction. “It should especially be noted that community development is not politically attractive as its positive effects manifests only after long gestation period. However, despite the political risks, the government started the programme and it had been a great success and now the federal government had requested help to help in replicating similar programmes in other parts of country, he said.

“Now we are leveraging upon the investment we have been doing since 2009 and using the resulting social capital for launching a poverty reduction programme,” he said. “In the 2018-19 budget we are starting with rural growth centres as a means to achieve poverty reduction.”

Shah said that his government believed in a strong federation but it was also clear that strength between the federating units lay in fairness of resource distribution. He added that if there was inequity in resource distribution then the federation weakened. “Realising this, it was only the PPP government that pushed the devolution of resources and this push was done against all odds from those who wanted to perpetuate the concentration of resources and unfairness.

“We take pride in claiming that the whole gamut of decentralised planning would not have started if devolution had not happened.” The chief minister further stated that the current provincial regime was leveraging on the foundation established in the last tenure. The focus of his government was now more on energy, public-private partnership, regional development, and reducing inequity.

He said his government’s approach focused on regional sources of growth, strengthening social and economic equity, adopting fiscal measures for resource generation and finally using public-private partnership. Talking about the Thar coal, Shah said it was almost a forsaken project and his government had brought it back to life.

He said the premise of energy sovereignty of Pakistan was based on Thar coal deposits. “The whole idea of energy-related CPEC investment would not have found firm grounds if Thar coal fields had not been developed,” he said and added that it was his government which made it happen, thus paving the way for investment in energy production and transmission.

He said his government had been working hard on resource availability from various sources, and was particularly working to increase its own resources, using public- private partnership, improving projects bankability, etc. “The Sindh government has already taken a pioneering role in the PPP mode, and projects like a road leading to the Thar field, the Jhirk Mullah Katiar Bridge on the River Indus, the Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas dual carriageway, the PPHI (Peoples’ Primary Healthcare Initiative), the Sindh Education Foundation and grants to philanthropic health organisations are all symbols of the expanding and deepening basis of the PPP in Sindh.”

Shah said his government was fully aware of the fact that alongside addressing law and order, parallel efforts to improve the business climate was vital; in fact, improvement in law and order was one of the inputs to improve business climate.

“Notwithstanding our love for our children, stock of reality is necessary to improve our plans. We know that we have resource gaps, we have capacity issues, we have planning challenges and we have prioritisation needs, and this is the very reason for holding the forum,” he said. Earlier, the forum was started in the morning with three sessions.

In the forum, 19 heads of country heads of different donor agencies had participated. P&D Minister Saeed Ghani welcomed the participants while P&D Chairman Mohammad Waseem spoke about the purpose of hosting the development forum.