Government spending in areas which tackle poverty has been drastically cut over the last fiscal year, while expenses on law and order increased by almost one-fifth, an official report revealed.
The Poverty Reduction Strategy Report 2011, released by the finance ministry on Wednesday, showed that this year’s expenditure on social security, welfare, population planning, rural development, low cost housing and employment programmes dropped below last year’s levels.
Although these critical areas were neglected, spending on education, health, roads and highways, agriculture, natural disasters and law and order rose above last year’s levels. However, since the government also counts running expenses in these figures, the calculation methodology in terms of poverty reduction can be misleading.
Overall, the federal and four provincial governments spent Rs 1245.8 billion on poverty alleviation – 12% or Rs 135 billion more than last year. This increase has not translated into ground reality, however, as inequality in the country is on rise according to recent official surveys. The government itself seems reluctant to work out the exact number of those living in poverty, despite possessing the raw data. Many experts argue that poverty in Pakistan has gone up in the last three years.
Expenses on social security and welfare dropped to Rs17.5 billion against Rs20.3 billion in the previous year. Population planning was slashed by over one-third and stood at Rs4.6 billion.
The biggest reduction in terms of percentage was on low-cost housing. Total spending was Rs373 million, compared to Rs1.83 billion last year – a decline of 80%. According to a high-level civil servant, who asked for us not to print his name, the federal government took Rs50,000 advances from many federal employees to provide low-cost housing, but is now apparently earning profit on this money, as it has not yet finalised the scheme.
In rural development, Rs 19.1 billion was spent, a drop of Rs 1.3 billion from 12 months ago. On the People’s Works Programme I, the spending declined by 40% to Rs5 billion and on Programme II it plunged one-third to Rs 21.3 billion.
On the other hand, the government spent Rs169.8 billion on maintaining law and order, a Rs26 billion or 18.3% increase from last year. Almost the entire amount – Rs 168.4 billion – was spent on running expenses; it seems disingenuous to include this spending under poverty reduction.
Health spending came in at Rs106 billion,an increase of Rs 11.6 billion or 12.3% from 2010. Out of this, however, Rs78.4 billion were current expenditures – mostly salaries and transportation. Similarly, expenses on education were Rs 322.2 billion, up Rs62.7 billion from last year, but again a chunky Rs277 billion of this was spent mostly on salaries.
The government released the figures after a four-month delay due to the Balochistan government filing their report late, an official from the report’s secretariat said.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 20th, 2011.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ