22% Pakistanis living below poverty line, NA told

Govt uses CBN method to estimate the number of people reaching this threshold

ISLAMABAD:

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led government informed the National Assembly on Monday that poverty has declined in Pakistan and currently around 22% people are living below the poverty line in the country.

The minister in charge of the Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Division told the lower house of parliament that 21.9% of the population is living below the poverty line as per the latest poverty headcount based on 2018-19 Household Integrated Economic Survey (HIES).

The minister concerned shared that the government officially uses Cost of Basic Need (CBN) method to estimate the number of poor living below the poverty line in Pakistan and uses the HIES data for this purpose.

The house was told that the last HIES was conducted for the year 2018-19 – the first year of PTI government – to measure poverty.

“Comparing with 2015-16,” the minister maintained, “CBN based headcount declined by 2.4% point, from 24.3% in 2015-16 to 21.9% in 2018-19.”

Read Bilawal lampoons govt over rising poverty

“Between 2010-11 and 2018-19,” the minister continued, “the ratio of poverty also showed a declining trend at national level as poverty declined from 36.8% in 2010-11 to 21.9% in 2018-19.” The decline in poverty was observed both in urban and rural areas, the minister added.

The details have come after PPP MNA Mahreen Razzaq Bhutto asked the minister concerned to share the number of the people living below the poverty line along with the yardstick or criteria used to identify such people.

Mahreen further asked when the last survey was conducted to measure poverty in the country and the details of increase and decrease in it during the last five years.

New BISP beneficiary survey

Meanwhile, the house was told that a new survey was being conducted to determine the beneficiaries of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) and it will be completed by the end of this month.

“To recertify the socioeconomic status of currently eligible beneficiaries and to identify new beneficiaries a new survey has started and will be completed by the end of September, 2021,” the assembly was told through a written answer during the question hour.

BISP had conducted its first ever survey in 2010-11. While the recertification and new survey proceeds, a policy decision has been taken to apply additional filters to the current data.

This has become possible because a number of administrative databases have become available over the last decade and it has become possible to conduct such data analyses.

It was also informed that BISP beneficiary profiling exercise was conducted by Nadra in December, 2019 on a total of 5,783,389 BISP beneficiaries and, as a result, a total of 820,165 beneficiaries were identified.

Read more Government plans steps to tackle poverty

It maintained that the policy decision does not imply that 820,165 exited beneficiaries were not eligible at the time of the survey 10 years ago, adding that it only means that additional filters can now be applied.

These beneficiaries were declared eligible on the basis of the Poverty Score Card (PSC) survey and their poverty score was below the decided threshold.

“While it is possible that there were inclusion errors, it is also possible that their status has actually changed over the last decade,” the reply to PPP’s Jam Abdul Karim Bijar read.

“Similarly, the policy decision is not implying that all these individuals have come out of poverty.”

Quorum haunts NA again

Meanwhile, the ruling party once again failed to complete quorum and the session had to be adjourned for Tuesday when a lawmaker from the opposition benches pointed it out.

Since the fourth parliamentary year has started, not a single session could be completed without being abruptly adjourned due to the absence of the lawmakers on treasury benches.