PRSP - SECRETARIATE
The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) Secretariat housed in the Ministry of Finance was established in 2000 to prepare a holistic anti-poverty strategy for Pakistan. It provides secretarial support to the National PRSP Implementation Committee. The Committee, headed by the Secretary Finance, comprises secretaries of Federal and Provincial PRSP partner government agencies to oversee the implementation of Pakistan’s PRSPs.
The PRSP Secretariat underpins the government’s institutional mechanism for poverty monitoring. The Secretariat has been mandated with the overall lead in coordinating, monitoring, evaluating and tracking the implementation of social indicators originally identified in the I-PRSP. Reporting progress on anti-poverty public expenditures, intermediate social indicators and final outcomes as devised under the results-based Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) framework of PRSP also constitutes an important function of the Secretariat. For this purpose a mechanism has been instituted with the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) for quarterly tracking of anti-poverty expenditures. A list of these expenditures along with their functional classifications has been developed with provincial consultations and PRSP expenditure reports are regularly posted on Finance Division's website.
The government has extended the practice of tracking budgetary expenditures to include all anti-poverty public outlays, budgetary expenditures as well as non-budgetary social safety transfers. Through this exercise, the government seeks to improve the allocative efficiency of scarce public resources and redirect them to the poor.
The real test of public expenditures lies in their impact. Therefore, the policies outlined in PRSP have been linked with the achievement of key social and human development goals. However, depending upon the variable being monitored, there is an implementation lag between expenditures incurred and outcomes achieved which makes it difficult to assess policy performance immediately e.g. even though public expenditures on primary schools may be increased, higher primary Gross Enrollment Rates (GER) will only show up after a time lag, and it may take several years before that results in higher adult literacy rates. However, there are some key intermediate social indicators that may depict the effect of policy interventions over a relatively shorter period of time. The government regularly reports information on such human development intermediate indicators to provide a valuable guide for evaluating the efficiency of public policies and public funds.
Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) Secretariat
Address:
Room # 321
External Finance Policy
Finance Division Q-Block,
Pak Secretariat Islamabad
Ph: 92(0)51-9204844
Fax: 92(0)51-9205219
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