| Username |
Post |
| basant |
Posted
on 18-Nov-01 08:48 PM
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Nepal, a least developed and land-locked nation, has accorded its topmost priority to poverty reduction, spending more than 70 percent of its budget in rural areas where the most poor live, and has adopted a marketled development with a two-pronged strategy. The government has focused on building critical infrastructure and developing such basic services as education, health, drinking water, and sanitation. The private sector is encouraged to invest in trade, industry and now increasingly infrastructure. Besides, non-governmental organisations have largely concentrated their activity on advocacy, social investment and community development.
Policies and measures have been instituted to attract foreign investment and to harness the creative potential of people by means of economic liberalisation, investment incentives, decentralisation, and rationalisation of public spending priorities. Of late, we have taken steps for land reform, empowerment of women through education, inheritance rights and political participation, together with special developmental programs to uplift weak and vulnerable people and regions.
Yet the progress has been slow in coming with its attendant serious consequences. Nepal's per capita GNP of $220 is one of the lowest in the world; 38 percent of the population lives below the poverty line ; and the ratio of the government's foreign debt stock to government revenue is 410 percent and to annual exports 350 percent. This statistics is incredibly disheartening even among the least developed countries.
Despite this, Nepal is left out of the HIPC initiative. I urge the donor community, therefore, to include Nepal in the initiative to help release our resources from debt servicing obligations that will enable us to implement poverty reduction programmes more effectively. But, it will in no way substitute the need for increased development assistance.
For further reading, please visit:
http://www.un.org/webcast/ga/56/statements/011114nepalE.htm
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| Siwalik |
Posted
on 18-Nov-01 11:33 PM
There goes the begging bowl again. There is not even a trace a shame left anymore. A rentier state has been perpetuated and select few are getting fat at the expense of thse 38 percent living in abject poverty, and others who are just tolerating what is imposed by a government that is facing a problem of legitimacy.
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 18-Nov-01 11:42 PM
>Yet the progress has been slow in coming with its attendant serious
>consequences
And who is to be blamed? NC is ruling the nation since last 10 years, and Dr Mahat
has been economic czar in all these years.
"The worst thing is not in begging,it is in thinking that begging is not a shameful
practice." As someone once said.
Dr Mahat, please promise to make a good statecraft so that you don't have to grin
with embarrassment in front of the whole world, reciting how poor we have been.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 19-Nov-01 06:03 AM
I have always thought "poverty reduction" was/is such a negative phrase.
Instead of focusing on "poverty reduction", why don't we focus on "wealth enhancement"?
It means the same, to be sure; but it's the attitude that makes a big difference. I have this feeling that more Nepalis would respond positively to ideas of increasing their wealth than to those of reducing their poverty.
Put simply, few people would want to be "less garib". A "less garib", after all,
is still a garib, still stuck in poverty!! But most reasonable Nepalis want to be
"richer" than they are.
So, why not appeal to people's desire to be rich than to their wanting
to be "less poor"?
Economics, especially microeconomics, is all about behaviors, behaviours and
behaviours.
I get a kick out of observing Nepali policy-makers usually discounting the reasons behind real-world behaviours of ordinary Nepalis and sticking to the models of textbook economics, which goes only so far to explain why people do what they do.
Unless a new generation of Nepali economists who know how to have INTELLECTUAL FUN with economics (a la to cite a big example: Paul Krugman
and others), we in Nepal are stuck with economists who are so sincere about
their theories that they end up as rational fools.
This is one topic -- and foreign aid is another -- that I could go on and on about, but cannot, because, if I say more, I will be blackballed by some members of the very policy circles I am trying to have some influence over. :-)
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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| GP |
Posted
on 19-Nov-01 06:19 AM
Ashu wrote:
Instead of focusing on "poverty reduction", why don't we focus on "wealth enhancement"?
---
In the political market of Nepal where politicians buy and sell SICK
(politically) peoples, the "WEALTH ENHANCEMENT" if replaces the
"POVERTY REDUCTION" in those political auctions, you will be dammned
in your account of VOTE and bankrupted within a weak. Because
the buyers of SICK Peoples (CPN UML) will start citing "SEE, they
are now working for only wealthy persons, they are going to forget
the peoples under poverty line", whatever level of honest you had
in taking things positively. You can never use "wealth" in Nepali
Politics, your opponents will have huge purchase of SICK Peoples.
Meanwhile, Dr. Mahat did not want to be MF this time, but, was
forced to take the bank rupted ministry with lots of corruptions.
You can see the peoples who worked in ministry they they
reduced their poverty to WEALTH enhancements. One Great
example peoples give is The Kantipur Publications Pvt. Ltd.
whose owner was life time govt. employee at TAX department.
How they have enhanced their wealth working at TAX Department.
GP
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| Siwalik |
Posted
on 19-Nov-01 12:51 PM
I think "poverty reduction" cannot be replaced by "wealth enhancement". In my opinion ashu misunderstand the meaning of "poverty reduction". It does not mean making poor people "less poor". It is an attempt on overall reduction in poverty, which means reducing the percentage of people that fall under official poverty line. In this understading, poverty reduction means reducng official Nepalese tally of poverty from 38 percent to anything lower than that. Poverty reduction, as utilized in the internatinal policy programs, does not imply individual poor people, but national percentage of destitutes. The alternate term suggested by ashu does not fall under "concept commensurability." For an analogy, when you measure the literacy of a society, you do not make individuals more literate, you increase the number of people who are literate. Similarly, if you want to measure the wealth of a country, you do not count the number of people who are filthy rich, but look at the GDP and the per capita purchasing capacity.
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| aago |
Posted
on 19-Nov-01 02:11 PM
try this link:
http://www.sebsonline.org/forum/forum_view.asp?T=10458
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