Framework for Economic Growth, Pakistan - Planning Commission

International conference on “Framework for Economic Growth, Pakistan”Questions and AnswersQUESTION:Question: We discussed about RBM and public-private partnership. Why is this not working inPakistan?Question: We have Prime Minister’s Inspection Commission in Pakistan. Why that commissionis not doing the job to effectively monitor and evaluate the results in the country?Question: We are talking about growth in the country. In a country where we have load sheddinghow can we go for the growth?Question: Economic growth comes with the introduction of new products and processes in theeconomy. My question is that how government is monitoring actions in term of innovation inproducts and processes, innovation in society and institutions etc?Question: In RBM we heard about disbursement of budgets against outcomes. I was justwondering that it takes long time to know about the results then how this tool would work in thereal world?Question: What is our strategy to make public and private sector accountable? And how peopleare going to be the part of this strategy in context of role of local government?ANSWERS:Answer by Dr. Akmal Hussain, Professor, Beaconhouse National University:In Pakistan decision are being made at topdownbasis in. The Prime Minister or theChief Ministers forget taking feedback fromthe inspection team or the feedback is vagueand doesn’t work as it should. We talkedabout two kinds of institutional mechanismsfor ensuring that public sector servicedelivery becomes questionable. Oneimportant thing is to identify clearly timeboundobjectives. Second important thing isthe evaluation of performance inmeasureable terms. My point is that insteadof internal performance based efficiency andcontrols we also need to have a system ofexternal evaluation where we can linkservice delivery with community basedorganizations. There are many communitybased organizations working at district,tehsil and village level which can be linkedup with the local government deliverysystem.I would also like to say that new productsand processes are essential for sustainedeconomic growth of the country. It is theduty of the government to provide a setup tohave such impacts for the development ofnew products and processes. But theproblem is that how we measure thatimpact? I think that Dr. Nadeem and histeam has tried to bring together what all newliterature in the last three decades oneconomics suggest. It tells that new productsand processes and innovation occur as aresult of opening up of the economy forprivate sector competition where a largenumber of economic actors outsidegovernment compete and their survival44