Pakistan's economy is on higher growth trajectory, which would result in improving living standard of people, increasing incomes and reducing poverty. The total grant assistance from the UN agencies is around $70 million per annum, which has helped in improving delivery capacity of the devolution programme.
Finance Minister, Shaukat Aziz said this during a meeting with Dr Hafiz A Pasha, Assistant Secretary General of the UN and Head of the UN Development Programme for Asia.
The government is now undertaking second-generation of reforms to further improve package introduced four years ago. These reforms would include improving governance, delivery of services like health and education enabling the country to exploit its full potential.
Shaukat appreciated the extensive and broad-based assistance of the UN to Pakistan through agencies like UNDP, UNFPA, Unicef, Unesco, WHO, FAO and WFP.
Dr Hafiz A Pasha appreciated the efforts of the government towards economic and political stability that has already helped to create peace in the region.
The Finance Minster said that implementation of reforms remain a major challenge and the UN assistance in capacity building will go a long way in improving the timeliness, speed and quality of implementation of Pakistan's development objectives.