By Asim Hussain
ISLAMABAD: Minister for Finance and Revenue Senator Muhammad Ishaq Dar on Monday informed the National Assembly that a comprehensive roadmap to carry out reconstruction and rehabilitation work in the flood-affected areas had almost been devised.
“Immediate relief work has already been done throughout the country with the disbursement of Rs25000 per family through the BISP programme. Almost Rs100 billion have already been spent in addition to the assistance extended by NDMA in kind,” the minister said on the floor of the National Assembly while responding to the concerns of Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) lawmaker Dr Nafisa Shah. The finance minister said the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet had recently approved Rs12 billion to replenish the stock of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), keeping in view the predicted threats of the monsoon and the cyclone.
Following the widespread destruction caused by the heavy rains and floods, Ishaq Dar said a comprehensive report had been prepared in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Bank (WB), Asian Development Bank (ADB), European Union and the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives that suggested the economic and physical loses stood at around $30.3 billion. He said funds amounting to $16.3 billion were required to execute the physical work like repair of damaged houses and infrastructure, under the ‘4RF’ strategy i.e. resilient, recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction In the General Donors Conference, the minister said less than $400 million were received while the pledges were made for bearing 50 per cent financing for the reconstruction and rehabilitation work. He said a committee, comprising the Sindh Chief Minister, and federal ministers including Khursheed Ahmed Shah, Syed Naveed Qamar and Sherry Rehman, was holding meetings and the roadmap in this regard had almost been devised.
“It (the reconstruction & rehabilitation) will be like a 4-5 year medium-term development plan. It is not an issue and will be resolved as there are no two opinions. Roughly $11 billion, out of $16.3 billion will be spent in Sindh under the 4RF policy,” he said. He assured the PPPP lawmaker that ‘everything is under planning as work is going on it,’ so there was nothing to worry about. “The work is in progress and hopefully it will be concluded today.”
Commenting on another issue, he said originally the Charter of Democracy (CoD) was signed with the ‘code of conduct’ that whosoever was elected to power, should not be backstabbed, adding afterwards civil-military relations, constitutional amendments as a result of which 18th, NFC award, legal reforms, truth & reconciliation commission.“I was in all that process.”
He said all things [included in the CoD] had been implemented except the Constitutional Code and the Truth & Reconciliation Commission.
During 2013-18, Ishaq Dar said he had constantly been advocating and offering for devising a Charter of Economy (C0E) so that whosoever came into power followed it in the supreme national interest.
Endorsing the views of Dr Nafisa Shah in this regard, the minister said “I think once the budget [ongoing budget session of the Parliament] is over, all-out efforts should be made to prepare a charter of economy to come out of the mess in which the nation had stuck.
“The quagmire is bigger than 1999 when the nuclear tests were carried out and the country faced international sanctions,” he said, adding the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government had overcome it in a short span of time.
“Now the declining graph [of the national economy] has stopped, and has attained stability. We need to make collective efforts to take it towards a growth trajectory, which will be achieved by the grace of Allah Almighty,” he remarked.
