ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s major social protection operation, the USD970 million Crisis-Resilient Social Protection (CRSP) Program, is set for a major shake-up as the World Bank decided to approve its second restructuring, aiming to align the project with the Bank’s new global corporate scorecard and enhance reporting on who benefits from social safety nets.
The restructuring will shift the program’s results framework to individual-level reporting, breaking down beneficiaries by gender and age (youth), in line with the World Bank’s fiscal year 2024–30 Corporate Scorecard methodology.
Official documents revealed that these changes will ensure consistency, improve data aggregation, and align project-level results with the Bank’s corporate targets, such as reaching 500 million poor and vulnerable people and 250 million women with social protection programs by 2030.
BISP to forge strong partnership with World Bank
By retrofitting the results framework through restructuring, CRISP will more accurately reflect the World Bank’s corporate reporting requirements, avoid undercounting, and increase transparency and accountability.
The CRISP Program—implemented by the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP)—continues to show strong performance four years into its implementation. World Bank records show USD704.44 million already disbursed, equivalent to 73 percent of the total financing envelope, with no overdue audits, ineligible expenditures, or fiduciary red flags. Both procurement and financial management are rated as satisfactory, with the overall project risk assessed as moderate.
Originally approved in March 2021 and bolstered by additional financing in 2024, CRISP aims to modernise Pakistan’s safety net systems while strengthening resilience against shocks.
Under the program, the National Socio-Economic Registry has already been refreshed for more than 22 million households, and education and nutrition cash transfer programs have expanded nationwide—enrolling over 10 million children under the Taleemi Wazaif program and more than 3.6 million mothers and children under the Nashonuma program.
BISP’s institutional capacity has drawn praise from repeated implementation support missions, with strong progress reported across data management, grievance redress, and federal-provincial coordination. A newly launched hybrid social protection scheme is also preparing for scale-up once an ongoing evaluation is finalized.
With a closing date of June 30, 2027, the program enters its next phase amid calls to streamline reporting and avoid beneficiary undercounting—changes the World Bank says will improve transparency, comparability, and corporate accountability.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.