Neither education, nor power for all...

With an underlying special theme of inequality, ADBs latest report on Asia - Asian Development Outlook 2012 - highlights the inherent lack of educational opportunities and the ensuing inequality in Pakistan. Inequality in education is assessed along three lines; inequality by wealth quintile, inequality by location and inequality by gender. The wealth quintile criterion evaluates the incidence of poverty in poorer households via the proportion of out-of-school children between rich and poor households. For Pakistan, the ratio worsened with increasing levels of education. While the net attendance rate for primary education for the upper quintile was two times as high as for the bottom quintile, the ratio was over five for secondary education and a whopping 27 for post-secondary education, according to the latest figures quoted in the report. Significant inequality in education also exists with respect to location in Pakistan, with the net attendance rate in rural areas only two-thirds of that in urban areas, half in secondary education and one-third in post-secondary education. As for education inequality based on gender, while it has improved over the years for Pakistan, - ratio of girls to boys enrollment in secondary education improving from 0.5 in 1990 to around 0.8 in 2010 - it is still lower relative to South Asian peers, except Afghanistan. ADB also sheds light on the D-index for measuring the extent of human opportunities in Asia. The D-index measures the degree of inequality of opportunity in a given country - the greater the index, the greater the inequality - and the ADB report focuses on it with particular attention to basic education and infrastructure. In terms of both primary and secondary education, Pakistans D-index was the highest among six selected developing countries in Asia, with that for secondary education higher than that for primary education, suggesting greater inequality in the former. Besides the theme of inequality, the report also undertakes an economic assessment of Pakistan, highlighting the oft-discussed issues of shrinking investment, high inflation and fiscal imbalances encountered by Pakistan in FY11. Economic prospects for the coming years showed more promise, with a higher GDP growth rate expected for FY12 and FY13. Yet, as aptly pointed out, "economic growth (is) below the pace needed to accommodate the predominately young population". Energy outages will continue to shadow better prospects for economic growth in the coming years, with textile manufacturers being the most hard-hit. The blow is also expected to be felt on the fiscal side, with an "overrun on energy subsidies expected to be more than triple the amount budgeted, at slightly above 2 percent of GDP". Unsurprisingly, power has been underscored as the greatest challenge to economic recovery in Pakistan, with the Planning Commission claiming that losses arising due to power and gas shortages may be held accountable for holding down GDP growth by 3-4 percentage points in FY11 and FY12. The government and policymakers need to resolve the power issue on a priority basis since it stands as a resilient weak point of economic growth in the country.

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Selected economic indicators (%)
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                            FY12      FY13
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GDP growth                   3.6       4.0
Inflation                   12.0      10.0
Current account balance
 (share of GDP)             -1.8      -1.9
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Source: ADB estimates