ISLAMABAD: Despite their critical contribution to poverty reduction, social protection programmes in Pakistan were fragmented and limited in coverage, administration, targeting efficiency, and ability to respond to shocks, says the World Bank.
The bank in a brief updated on its website stated that the World Bank’s support to social protection in Pakistan has provided a pathway out of poverty for millions of households.
The Pakistan Social Safety Net Project (2009-17) has remained the bank’s flagship engagement supporting the expansion and strengthening of Pakistan’s national safety net platform, known as Benazir Income Support Program (BISP).
A key feature of this program has been the cash transfers directly to women, which has among other, significantly contributed to increase in their coverage for national identification system to open up the avenues for women empowerment.
Investment in this national platform formed the basis of the country’s quick scale up of support to the poorest, with bank assistance, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and related lockdowns.
The BISP now forms one of South Asia’s largest social safety net systems.
Pakistan has made important strides in poverty reduction, but it remains an unfinished agenda.
While the country has lifted more than 23 million people out of poverty between 2001-02 to 2013-14, there are significant disparities in poverty rates between rural (30.7 percent) and urban areas (12.5 percent), with poverty having declined faster in urban areas.
It further stated that safety net cash transfers have been an integral contributor to poverty reduction along with remittances and resilience of a large informal economy.
Despite their critical contribution to poverty reduction, social protection programs in Pakistan were fragmented and limited in coverage, administration, targeting efficiency, and ability to respond to shocks.
Traditional cash transfer programs had a sizable share of the social protection expenditure devoted to social security spending for formal sector workers and leakage of safety nets to the non-poor were significant.
Less than 50 percent of expenditures reached the poorest 40 percent of the population by 2011. A revamping of the social protection mechanisms was needed. Pakistan’s current safety net landscape is largely federal with several flagship programs supported by modern delivery systems developed through the BISP.
The project strengthened the administration and performance of the country’s safety net with a focus on the BISP through roll out of a national targeting system and strengthening of safety net operations by capacity building of the BISP. It also supported in enhancing safety net program management, accountability and evaluation; and developing the social protection policy and strategy to address the evolving challenges in the sector.
One of the BISP’s most celebrated achievements has been the focus on female beneficiaries by making them the direct recipients of cash transfers and opening a pathway to national identification, a prerequisite for receiving payments.
With an enhanced focus on digital payments, even the poorest women can now access branchless banking accounts for the first time in their lives.
This novel approach has profoundly impacted women’s access to identification, financial inclusion and enhanced their agency and decision-making power.
Cash transfers have been made to 4.6 million women heads of households in Pakistan, representing 23 million family members.
In 2013, 75 percent of disbursed BISP cash transfers have been received by the poorest beneficiaries in quintiles 1 and 2 (from the 2011 baseline of 46 percent).
The co-responsibility Cash Transfers (CCT) in 50 districts is linking cash transfers to primary school education under the Waseela-e-Taleem program.
More than 1.3 million children have been enrolled in the program till 2019, of which nearly 50 percent are girls.
Transparency and efficiency have improved with 97 percent of the beneficiaries receiving electronic payments.
Since the start of the BISP Program in 2008, over 15 million new female citizens have received their CNICs which show a 70 percent increase in the overall women registration in the country.
The establishment of a National Socio-Economic Registry (NSER) using an objective targeting system, hosting a database of more than 27 million households (about 167 million people) – the first in South Asia.
More than 70 organizations are already using this registry for their pro-poor social sector initiatives.
The BISP currently updating the household welfare information in the Registry to be completed by June 2021.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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