WASHINGTON - The economic cost of fighting the war on terror as a frontline state coupled with a 'ferocious militancy' and the resulting loss of lives is becoming 'unbearable', Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance, Shaukat Tarin said at the joint World Bank-IMF meeting before his departure from Washington as he enlisted international support in overcoming the consequences of the global financial crisis. "If on one hand, more than 100,000 of our troops are battling a ferocious militancy, on other, our people in the main cities and federal capital are becoming victims of the suicide bombings. The loss of lives and economic cost imposed by this war are now rising to an unbearable level," he told finance ministers and other delegates from around the world. "There is a very negligible portion of these costs that is defrayed by our partners," the advisor added. Tarin said Pakistan's elected government was pursuing an elaborate programme to achieve macroeconomic stability and fight poverty besides combating the meance of extremism. "Besides ensuring macroeconomic stability, our new programme will be primarily aimed at poverty reduction. For this purpose, apart from cash transfers to the poorest households, we will provide health insurance, skills development opportunity for at least one member of a family, and a suitable development support that will create temporary employment opportunities for each union council, which is the smallest administrative unit," he stated. Spelling out priorities of the programme, he said it would be supported by initiatives to revitalise agriculture, make the industry competitive, meet the growing energy needs, raise capital and finance for development, remove infrastructure bottlenecks through public-private partnership and reinvigorate the institutions of governance so that a just and fair administrative machinery couls serve as the anchor for the implementation of a vigorous and ambitious economic programme. "We look up to our development partnership, especially the IFIs, to help us lead this programme, through both their advisory and financial assistance. We would also recommend that our bilateral partners also play their role within the larger framework that will evolve through active consultation with the IFIs," he said. Tarin referred to the challenges of extremism, demcoratic revival and financial crunch and reminded the world the support it owed to the key South Asian country in easing its difficulties. "Oil and food prices shocks have affected the developing countries most profoundly, and we are still reeling under their aftermath". In the case of Pakistan, we were not merely facing the economic consequences of the global crises but were playing the role of a frontline state against the war on terror. But, he reiterated, the government's firm resolve to move forward, "I take pride in stating that despite the gravity of the challenges, the democratic government has not abandoned country's resolve to move forward and to do things right both in standing up to the call of fighting the militancy as well as in preserving the market economy that we have evolved during the last two decades." "We may be amongst the few countries who have successfully adjusted to the unprecedented increases in petroleum and electricity prices by eliminating nearly all the subsidies. The pain inherent in this adjustment can be gauged by the fact that these prices have nearly doubled or will be doubled at the close of the adjustment. We have also successfully met the challenges of food shortages both through timely imports as well as by aligning domestic agriculture prices with international prices. On the monetary side, we are fighting the rising inflation by interest rates adjustment and by containing the monetary growth. We have also set the goal to adhere to a zero net government borrowings target from the central bank."