Friday, 07 September 2012
PRESS RELEASE
Overcoming Post-Conflict Economic Challenges through Private Sector Development
The ILO, jointly with GIZ (German Association for International Collaboration) has unveiled an innovative approach to boost private sector development in post-conflict situations. It was launched at a three day international training event in Islamabad, Practicing Private Sector Development in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations, and brought together donors and practitioners from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. The project was the first of its kind, and will serve as a template for future ventures in other developing countries.
This training event built on a writing workshop conducted earlier this year by ILO CRISIS and ITC Turin under the auspices of DCED, to bring together the collective knowledge of experts from around the world.
At the opening ceremony of the training course on Tuesday (6 September), Mr Francesco d’Ovidio, ILO Country Director Pakistan welcomed the foreign guests, trainers and participants. He highlighted that the region is facing a multitude of economic challenges due to various crises and mentioned the various efforts by Government, employers’ and workers’ organizations and other stakeholders to overcome these challenges and to reduce the effects of such crises on poor people. Mr d’Ovidio praised the new training as a timely effort to support the organizations in realigning their efforts and resources towards Private Sector Development (PSD) and emphasized that effective use of this knowledge will benefit the host countries in this Region.
Ms Götze-Pfeiffer, Portfolio Manager at GIZ also spoke at the opening ceremony. She underlined high youth unemployment as a major concern. Referring to findings in the World Development Report 2011, she mentioned that low per capita income and unemployment are major drivers of conflict and concluded that the path to longer-term development and peace "is dependent on a healthy private sector".
Nurturing the private sector during fragile and conflict-affected situations helps in a number of ways. By providing the poor with the capacity to find jobs and improve their incomes, PSD lays the foundation for their exit from charity. In addition, a growing private sector will enable governments in developing countries to generate the tax revenues needed to provide essential services, like health care, education and infrastructure.
The approach offers tools for conflict analysis too, with a special focus on the private sector. Participants in the recent training were exposed to a range of PSD interventions contributing to jobs-creation, stability in society and trust-building amongst different levels of Actors. It was emphasized that PSD should be promoted through an inclusive and participatory method and interventions closely monitored through a comprehensive set of indicators.
The course will become a permanent part of both training arms of GIZ and ILO to be held once a year in Italy and in Germany.
For more information, please contact
Dr M. Saifullah Chaudhry
Senior Programme Officer
ILO Islamabad
Tel # 051-2276456-8
Fax # 051-2279181-2
E-mail: msaif@ilo.org
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