The World Bank is now the world’s largest external funder of health, committing more than $1 billion annually in new lending to improve health, nutrition, and population in developing countries. Pakistan is a developing country and in order to make its economy strong it has to seek assistance from the international financial institutions such as International Monetary Fund or IMF and World Bank. The purpose of IMF is to promote the monetary help and corporation at international level and provide advice on policy matters and technical assistance in order to help the countries for building and maintaining stronger economies. IMF also provides short and medium term loans and assists the countries in designing the policy programs for solving the problems of balance of payments (Copelovitch, 2010). The World Bank works for the reduction of poverty and promotion of long term growth of economy by providing financial and technical support to the countries. It provides support for building health sector, schools, providing electricity and water, and for the protection of environment (Moore, 2007).
Human capital is considered as a major stimulus for the economic growth. Proper utilization of human capital can ensure long term development and growth of the economy. Education is the main source of human capital development in the country. But unfortunately, in Pakistan, sufficient arrangements are not available for educating people. Improved schooling facility is not available in Pakistan, due to which children are not equipped with the knowledge and skills that are required for the growth of country. The situation can however be analyzed from the fact that the literacy rate of Pakistan is just 56% (Khan, 2013). This is due to the fact that there is no proper monitoring as well as checks and balances on the education system, particularly on public sector educational institutions. Majority of population in Pakistan is poor and they cannot afford private schooling for their children.
Furthermore, gender disparity is also prevailing in Pakistan. The society is male dominating, which is not letting the females to progress. The females suffer because of the gender bias and she has to remain confined in the four walls of their houses. In case a woman is doing job in any sector, she is not given the status and the salaries equal to men, which is quite disheartening for the professional females. In case of education, parents in Pakistan invest for the education of their son and not for daughter, which is also a main reason that is not letting Pakistan to grow.
Heath is also a vital element for the progress of a country. For example, Better health results in more productive workers that helps to increase the output level of the economy. If the health of a family is good then they can give proper care and attention to their dependents. Another example of good health is that it facilitates improved learning. Proper nutrition and reduction in the disease help to improve the cognitive development and enhance the learning ability. Healthy children will gain more knowledge from the school as he/she do not remain absent from school due to illness. Moreover, the healthy individuals have the capability and advantage of saving more, and this capital accumulation results in better growth through the investment. Further, other countries will also like to invest as they can estimate that the workforce and healthier and educated and can work more in order to achieve more productivity. But as a matter of fact, the health sector is also deprived of proper treatment arrangements in Pakistan due to insufficient funds and inappropriate allocation of the funds. People remain deprived of the medicines and treatment.
Additionally, the lending institutions i.e., IMF and World Bank are also not playing proper role for the prosperity of the country. They are hindering the social, political and economic development of the country. Considering IMF, The interests of bureaucrats and economic interests of the shareholders are the most noteworthy political economic factors that are not letting the institution to work properly (Bird & Rowlands, 2001). These are the major factors that play their role for loaning to the developing countries and for allocation of aid and the related decisions. The hindering of the social, political and economic developing of Pakistan by the lending institutions can be noticed from the fact that the international bureaucrats pressurizes the executive board of the lending institutions in order to favor the lending to their home countries and defensive lending to the other countries that have the risk of default (Anwar, 2006). They are sure of the fact that the developing countries will not be able to repay the previous loans and in order to pay the loan they will take further loan. This is just to create loan burden on the developing economies and by doing this the international bureaucrats are fulfilling their political motives (Vreeland, 2006). The United State’s interest has played a significant role in this regard. In 1999, Pakistan was also among the top five developing countries whose nationals was working in the IMF (Barro & Lee, 2005). This also signifies the fact that these professionals convince their country for taking longer term loans form IMF. Furthermore, for the education and health the World Bank is providing interest bearing loans to Pakistan and other developing countries, which is damaging for them because the countries will not be able to borrow further money from the international markets as they have to pay the previous loans (Ruger, 2005).
References
Barro, Robert J., & Lee, Jong-Wha. (2005). IMF programmes: Who is chosen and what are the effects? Journal of Monetary Economics,Volume 52, pp. 1245-1269
Bird, Graham., & Rowlands, Dane. (2001), IMF lending: How is it affected by economic, political and institutional factors? Policy Reform, Volume 4, pp. 243-270
Copelovitch, Mark S. (2010). The International Monetary Fund in the Global Economy. Cambridge University Press, New York
Khan, Ghazala Murad. (2013). Literacy and Pakistan. Dawn. Retrieved from:
http://www.dawn.com/news/1012884/literacy-and-pakistan
Moore, David. (2007). The World Bank: Development, Poverty, Hegemony, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, South Africa
Ruger, Jennifer Prah. (2005). The Changing Role of the World Bank in Global Health. American Journal of Public Health, 95(1), 60-70
Vreeland, James Raymond. (2006). The International Monetary Fund (IMF): Politics of Conditional Lending. Taylor and Francis, United Kingdom
