The government has initiated the process of formulating the second version of the lender-driven poverty reduction strategy paper to be effective from fiscal year 2008-09 on expiry of the current development document at the end of the current fiscal.

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The initiative has been taken recently without assessing the impacts of the current strategy styled 'Unlocking the Potentials: National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction', say officials of the government agencies concerned.

The government is supposed to prepare and present a review report on the strategy paper at the Poverty Reduction Forum with international lenders and donors expected to be held in January.

An independent committee on PRS implementation may also come up with a report in January 2008, officials at the General Economics Division of the Planning Commission informed New Age.

'Updating the three-year rolling plan and policy matrix may be the major focus of the next PRSP,' said economist Hossain Zillur Rahman, a member of the independent committee who was also involved in authoring the current document.

The strategy paper was incorporated into the budgetary process in 2004-05 through a three-year rolling plan, which was later extended for one more fiscal year.

The document was endorsed by the cabinet of Khaleda Zia, although a cabinet minister, Abdul Moyeen Khan, had thrown away a copy of the PRSP at a function in Dhaka in presence of donors and lenders in 2006. Moyeen Khan had made an attempt to prepare a 15-year perspective plan
during Khaleda's first stint in office but failed due to opposition from colleagues.

Asked if the second document would be more home-grown than the first one, which was prepared under diktats of the multilateral lending agencies, an official concerned said there would be 'shadow of the lenders' in it as the government would hold dialogue with them as well.

The General Economics Division as the focal point for formulation of such development policy documents has already formed 20 thematic groups to make suggestions on various aspects of the second PRSP.