Poverty reduction success depends on Government
By Business Reporter
THE onus to successfully implement the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and reduce poverty levels to 65 per cent lies with the Government, a Ministry of Finance official has said.
The official intimated recently that Government had committed itself to reducing poverty from 86 to 65 per cent by year end 2004, but said it was up to Government to address its capacity weaknesses and reach its objectives.
And according to the 2002 Census Human Development Report, incidences of increased poverty are traced to the 1990’s when levels degenerated from 73 per cent up to 86 per cent.
The official said Government would have to improve on its planning and prioritisation of programmes it has planned to fund in line with the PRSP, by clearly outlining poverty reducing activities within identified sectors.
“But there are indications of keen commitment by Government to reduce on expenditure and borrowing, which has been one of its major weaknesses,” he said.
He, however, said Government should also set clear-cut targets and indicators that explicitly link it to meeting of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), while at the same time integrating issues that are of main concern to development partners like fiscal discipline, education, HIV/AIDS, the environment and gender.
He was however optimistic that with Government having identified areas of concern, and having been working with the civil society and development partners in developing the PRSP, Government was on track to meeting the challenges of reducing poverty.
“It may look ambitious, but Government is on course and has identified priority sectors and their contribution to pro-poor growth, its deliberate programme to improve governance and reduce corruption is also in line with donor conditions.
“It also has properly analysed data that covers a wide dimension of poverty and provides alternative disaggregated information on how poverty could be tackled, by household, gender and region.
“It is now up to Government to implement what they have outlined in the PRSP, within the framework of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF),” he said.
