The Ministry of Planning Development & Special Initiatives on Thursday organized a Workshop on Public Investment Management Assessment (PIMA), Climate-PIMA & Climate Gender Tagging of Development Budget under the chairmanship of Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Mohammad Jehanzeb Khan (DCPC) in collaboration with Revenue Mobilisation, Investment & Trade (REMIT). The REMIT provides technical assistance to Pakistan to implement reforms for strengthening macroeconomic stability and improving conditions for high and sustained growth, mutual prosperity, job creation and poverty reduction. The workshop was attended by the Secretary Planning Ministry, Project Director, 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. It also creates infrastructure and leverages the potential of the economy for creation of much needed social goods. Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission of Pakistan in its opening remarks briefed that Public investment’s key objectives are to efficiently allocate scarce resources against competing demands for its optimal utilization. IMF carried out 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. He further added that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Mission also undertook Climate PIMA. IMF identified future steps to improve Public investment infrastructure in Pakistan including climate-oriented initiatives, urban planning and construction climate-related risks and impacts. Chief (G&E) Shahid Zia Cheem, gave a presentation on 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 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 & 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. Keeping in view the upcoming challenges, Handbook on Climate Risk Screening in Policy Planning Process has been approved by Planning Commission in its meeting held on 27.02.24 alongwith updated Manual for Development Projects including climate proof PC’s proformas to make the infrastructure climate resilient, adaption and ensure climate mitigation assessment to combat climate related crises. For the next stage, Climate/ Gender tagging of the Development Budget will be carried out. Dr. Raja M. Ali Saleem, ADB Consultant, gave a presentation on Climate/ gender tagging of development budget and discussed in detail the technical aspects of the climate/gender tagging framework. JCE(EP) coordinated the question answer session to feedback and valuable inputs from the participants. Secretary, Planning Ministry in concluding remarks asserted that this is the first step towards climate/gender tagging. This needs to be done gradually and to make the tagging objectively there is a need to seek some international standards. Further, data availability and quality will play pivotal roles in climate/gender tagging and climate proof Manual including Handbook and PCs proforma would be helpful for seeking donors funding. At the next stage, disaster assessment and gender should be focused and tagging would be done accordingly.
PREVIOUS NEXT
