Sindh to host forum on March 28 to evolve new uplift strategy

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, in a high-level meeting held here at the CM House on Thursday, approved arrangements for hosting a ‘Sindh Development Forum 2018 (SDF) with the slogan of ‘partnership for development’ in Karachi on March 28.

The SDF will be attended by 19 country heads of different agencies such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNDP, ILO Unicef, USAID, European Union, ACF and World Food Programme, as wells as by a large number of leading diplomats.

The government expects that it would be a big event and opportunity to evolve new strategy for the development of Sindh and strengthen the development partnership with national and international partners and donor agencies.

The meeting was attended by all the provincial ministers, Chief Secretary Rizwan Memon, P&D Chairman Mohammad Waseem and secretaries of all the departments.

Chief Minister Shah said that the objective of the forum was to understand the state of development in the province, recognise development gaps, evolve a shared understanding of priorities between the government and development partners, formulate common strategies for development priorities to become a guiding tool in the ADP formulation and launch new formulated strategies.

P&D Chairman Mohammad Waseem, briefing the meeting, said that the programme comprised three sessions. The first session would be plenary and would introduce the forum’s objectives, set the context and orient participants about working groups. The second session would comprise deliberations and presentations by nine parallel working groups. The groups would converge for consolidating the recommendations, and third and the final session would be plenary in which thematic leads would present the sectorial recommendations.

Waseem told the meeting that there would be at the forum nine breakout sessions on different sectors such as agriculture & food security, health; water, sanitation & municipal services; education; energy & infrastructure; economic growth, private sector & PPP mode; public financial management, poverty reduction & community development.

The chief minister termed the forum an opportunity to evolve new guidelines for shaping up the provincial economy, development and a focused approach on development gaps. He directed all the provincial ministers and secretaries to participants with the objective of extracting something better for their respective sectors or departments.