Squandered decade: Poverty reduction spending proves useless

$1.2 billion gone to waste; ministers criticise Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund for ineffective planning.

ISLAMABAD: Some $1.2 billion dollars spent by the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) in the past ten years has gone to waste as poverty levels in Pakistan kept increasing instead of decreasing during that period.

Members of the Cabinet’s Economic Coordination Committee reached this conclusion in their January 13 meeting.

The meeting, which was presided by Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, scrutinised the PPAF’s performance and its expenditure; the fund’s authorities gave a presentation to over two dozen ministers.

According to official documents available with The Express Tribune, the PPAF was originally established by Dr Hafeez Pasha, Dr Shahid Javed Burki, Mueen Afzal from the finance division, member planning Muttawakal Qazi, former secretary of the planning division Ashraf Hayat, economic affairs division joint secretaries Javid Hassan and Shahab Anwar Khawaja, and a former planning and development division secretary. Funds from the Pakistani government were transferred to this newly-established organisation.

Following the presentation, the documents say, all ministers believed that a huge amount had been wasted in the name of poverty reduction efforts.

They claimed they could not see any visible impact on the lives of the poor over the period the PPAF had been functioning.

Earlier, a presentation was given to ECC members in which they were told that the PPAF became operational in 2000 and had its own independent board of directors. The government of Pakistan has been contributing funds and also arranged for loans from other agencies, which would be repaid by the Government of Pakistan.

The ECC was told that the PPAF covered 95 per cent of Pakistan, that is 127 districts. It has 87 partners, works with 242,000 community-based organisations and covers up to 80,000 villages and settlements. The output for micro loans is 2,800,000 infrastructure loans, including 22,800 H&E projects and 120,000 housing units. It has also trained 447,000 individuals.

After the presentation, government ministers criticised the PPAF and its authorities for what they termed was its failure in achieving its goals despite spending billions of dollar.

The ministers observed that the PPAF had no comprehensive strategy or plan for poverty reduction in Pakistan. They said that there was no integrated or focused approach and mechanism to address the issue.

The ministers said that the programme should be launched with focused and targeted objectives.

Some participants said that duplication of activities among different organisations such as the National Rural Support Programme (NRSP), the PPAF and the public sector was another sore spot.

Participants also observed that there was no linkage between PPAF and public representatives and that public representatives did not know where the PPAF was getting money from and where and how it was being spent.

Most representatives did not have the programme in their constituencies, despite the fact that poverty exists everywhere in Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 28^th,  2011.