‘Public investment’s key objectives are to efficiently allocate scarce resources’

ISLAMABAD: Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Mohammad Jehanzeb Khan said that public investment’s key objectives are to efficiently allocate scarce resources against competing demands for its optimal utilisation.

“The International Monetary Fund (IMF) carried out an assessment of the existing mechanism of the public investment assessing institutional design and its effectiveness. The three areas of planning, allocation and implementation of public investment were evaluated. IMF identified future steps to improve Public investment infrastructure in Pakistan including climate-oriented initiatives, urban planning and construction climate-related risks and impacts,” the Planning Commission deputy chairman expressed these views, on Thursday, in his opening remarks of a Workshop on Public Investment Management Assessment (PIMA).

The workshop was organised by the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives.

The workshop was attended by the Secretary Planning Ministry, Project Director, Revenue Mobilisation, Investment & Trade (REMIT) Hamed Yaqoob Sheikh, and other senior officials of the ministry were also present at the workshop.

The secretary Planning Ministry apprised the forum about the importance of public investment in policy planning. He stressed that public investment is an important policy instrument for providing an enabling environment for private investment and achieving socio-economic objectives. He said it also creates infrastructure and leverages the potential of the economy for the creation of much needed social goods.

Chief (G&E) Shahid Zia Cheema, gave a presentation on the IMF Technical Assistance report and highlighted key aspects of the report which includes to ensure coordination and alignment between national goals and strategies, individual investment projects including a state-owned enterprise (SOEs); reduce government footprint by improving competition in some economic infrastructure markets through privatization; minimize leakages in procurement process; adopt and progressively convert to the use of e-procurement for development and non-development expenditure and the reassessment and affordability of PSDP to cap the throw-forward.

He further added that Pakistan has one of the highest disaster risk-prone countries in the world and ranked as fifth most climate-vulnerable.

Dr Raja M Ali Saleem, ADB consultant, gave a presentation on climate/gender tagging of the development budget and discussed in detail the technical aspects of the climate/gender tagging framework.

The Planning Ministry secretary in concluding remarks asserted that this is the first step towards climate/gender tagging. He said that data availability and quality would play pivotal roles in climate/gender tagging and climate-proof manual including Handbook and PCs proforma would be helpful for seeking donors funding. He said that at the next stage, disaster assessment and gender should be focused and tagging would be done accordingly.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024