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Kathmandu Tuesday September 11, 2001 Bhadra 26, 2058.
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Participatory approach in Tenth Plan
stressed
Post Report
KATHMANDU, Sept 10 - Experts and planners gathered at a
national level interaction programme have stressed the need to accelerate participatory
development approach to achieve sole poverty reduction objectives of the upcoming Tenth
Plan.
Speaking in the programme organized by the National Planning
Commission (NPC) with an aim to discuss the newly released Approach Paper of Tenth Plan
and incorporate expertise views on the final draft, they urged the government to
strengthen its monitoring and evaluating capability to realize the outcomes of the
investments.
Highlighting the major aspect of the approach-paper Prithvi
Raj Ligal, Vice Chairman of the NPC, said that the paper has specially stressed to
encourage local people’s participation on the development activities.
"Participatory approach of the local people in the development activities and making
them aware about their responsibility to ensure sustainability of such activities are some
of the major sectors to be focused on the Tenth Plan."
He also said that the plan will also focus on the role of
private sector on the resource mobilization and delivery of service to the people.
Expressing concern over the fact that some regions and
certain community of the country are still out of the ongoing development process, he said
that the government is determined to bring some especial and targeted programs to bring
such region and community into the main development stream. Vice Chairman Ligal also
underlined the need of good governance to make the anti-poverty programs result-oriented.
Presenting the preliminary draft of the Tenth Plan, Dr
Shankar Sharma, Member of NPC highlighted focus areas of the plan and added that the
upcoming plan will be different from the previous plans in the sense that majority of the
programs of Tenth Plan will be focused on poverty reduction.
He also presented a brief evaluation of the ongoing Ninth
Plan and said that the overall achievement of the Ninth Plan is moderate. "The
overall economic growth during the Ninth Plan will be less than 5 per cent against the
target of 6 per cent mainly due to less-than-expected performance of both the agricultural
and non-agricultural sectors."
Referring to the targets and achievements in the social
sector, he also said that the outcomes of the health and education sectors are poor.
"The major cause of such performance is either due to lack of budget or due to the
management failure."
He also admitted that some of the programs of the Ninth Plan
was ambitious and was not correlated with the long-term development strategies. "Of
the total agricultural related program of the Ninth Plan, around 40 per cent were not even
mentioned in the Agricultural Prospective Plan (APP)- the 20-years agricultural
development plan of the government."
He also blamed that the week monitoring mechanism of the
development projects has hindered in achieving targeted poverty reduction and said the
Tenth Plan will have a strong monitoring system.
Participating on the discussion, Dr Dilli Raj Khanal,
Lawmaker of the Main Opposition CPN-UML said that most of the pro-poor programs of the
Ninth Plan were not implemented due to which the poverty rate has not declined
satisfactorily. He also seriously questioned the claim of NPC that the poverty rate has
been declined to 38 per cent from 42 per cent recorded in the beginning of the Ninth Plan.
"How can the poverty rate can come down when the performances of almost all the
anti-poverty programs is extremely poor?" he asked.
Similarly, Mohan Man Saiju, former vice chairman of NPC
flayed the paper on the ground that it has failed to address the emerging challenges posed
by the ongoing economic transformation. "Lack of focus and priority programs to
maximize the limited resources and overlapping of policies, strategies, instruments and
goals are some of the serious shortcomings of the paper," he said.
Dr Minendra Rijal said that lack of proper coordination
between the strategy and programs and low growth rate in the agricultural sector is the
principal cause of the poor achievement in the poverty reduction. He also stressed on the
need of risk sharing policy to attract private investment in more extensive way.
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