Kathmandu, Jan. 26 : Minister for Finance Mahesh Acharya has said that Nepal is in urgency to develop an integrated poverty reduction programme with wide geographical and demographic coverage.
Finance Minister Acharya was speaking at a dinner hosted in honour of president of Asian Development Bank (ADB) Tadao Chino Thursday.
“We have created Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF), which would help not only streamline all poverty related programmes but would also help design integrated poverty reduction programme to the needy area and the people,” he added.
Education, health drinking water and the areas which directly benefit the poor are increasingly sharing more resources, he said, adding “the development of women, marginalized sections and underdeveloped regions are also the focus of the government’s priority. In spite of our priority for the targeted poverty alleviation programme and projects, we can not and should not overlook the projects in the areas of infrastructure development either.”
Appreciating ADB’s recent initiative on sub-regional co-operation among the countries of South Asian Growth Quadrangle (SAGQ), he said apart from identifying projects for investment, such initiative should focus on addressing key cross-border co-ordination issues and help developing appropriate enabling environment and institutional arrangements for implementation of the projects.
“Nepal is very keen to be involved as an active partner with DAB and other member countries,” He said.
President of the ADB Tadao Chino said with poverty reduction as the overarching goal of the ADB, strong support should be offered to the government’s reform agenda, which also has as the ADB’s primary objective a substantial reduction in the high incidence of poverty that still pervades Nepal.
“We recognise too that Nepal, as a small and least developed, landlocked and largely mountainous country, faces many formidable challenges in achieving its development goals. But these extra development challenges make it all the more important that the country gets its policy environment right by aggressively pursuing its economic reform agenda,” he added.
He also noted that key areas for Nepal included the need for improved governance, particularly civil service reform and anti-corruption efforts, decentralisation, financial sector reform, stronger domestic resource mobilisation, greater emphasis on cost recovery, as well as greater encouragement to private sector participation and investment.