ISLAMABAD: The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) remained the country’s flagship social protection programme in the outgoing fiscal year 2025-26, but the data related to its budget continued to be marked with inconsistencies, as evident in the Economic Survey for the outgoing financial year released by the government on Thursday.
According to the Survey, the budgetary allocation for the BISP in FY-2025-26 had stood at 722.49 billion rupees, while the amount released was reported to be Rs540.27 billion during July-March of FY 2025-26.
The total budgetary allocation for FY2025-26 on cash transfers was reported at Rs697.91 billion.
Overall, the BISP mainly covered 10.20 million Kifaalat beneficiaries in the financial year, reveals the Economic Survey.
However, in the previous official documents, the BISP’s budget for the outgoing financial year was shown to be Rs716 billion, and in some other documents this figure was Rs722 billion.
The first review of the ongoing International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme loan released in May 2025 noted Rs716 billion as BISP’s budget for FY2025-26. This figure was also given by Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb in his budget speech in the National Assembly in June last year.
The BISP was budgeted at Rs722.48 billion for FY2025-26, an increase of over 20 percent in the programme’s annual budget, in comparison to Rs598.71 billion it received in FY2024-25.
The Finance Ministry’s detailed budget documents, however, listed Rs716.61 billion under the head of “operating expenses”, and the BISP’s total budget for FY2025-26 was shown to be Rs722.48 billion.
The Economic Survey stated that the Benazir Kafaalat programme remained the largest component of the BISP in FY2025-2026 under the Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) component that amounted to Rs564.89 billion.
The Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) component that comprises Benazir Taleemi Wazaif and Benazir Nashonuma, the education and healthcare initiatives under the BISP, stood at Rs133.02 billion in FY2025-26, covering 6.59 million beneficiaries.
The BISP launched Social Protection Wallets (SPWs) initiative in the outgoing fiscal year — an initiative designed to transition BISP payments to a computerized national identity card-linked digital payment framework, targeting around 10 million beneficiary households, according to the Economic Survey.
Under the SPW initiative, SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) issuance has been operationalized across all 710 tehsils of the country, according to the Economic Survey.
The Survey reveals that around 7.3 million cellular SIMs have already been distributed to beneficiaries, and that this process is “expected to move close to full coverage and will provide the basis for wallet activation”.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
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