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BR Research

Forced exit of BISP beneficiaries

Dr. Sania Nishtar’s tweet about the cabinet’s approval to force-exit about 0.82 million beneficiaries from Benazir I
Published December 27, 2019 Updated December 28, 2019

Dr. Sania Nishtar’s tweet about the cabinet’s approval to force-exit about 0.82 million beneficiaries from Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) has been received with mixed response. Some hail the decision; others are quite critical of it; whereas many others seem to be sitting on the fence. In the absence of a detailed document that should have been shared by the BISP, there is only so much one can glean from the table tweeted by the BISP chairperson. But here are some initial observations.

Both the number of beneficiaries made to exit from the BISP and the amount in question is substantial. At 0.82 million, the number of exiting beneficiaries is about 14.3 percent of the total beneficiaries of 5.7 million. And the Rs16 billion annual saving that Sania talked about equals about 9 percent of budgeted spending in FY20. These are huge potential savings and deserve commendation, if indeed there are no material errors in the beneficiaries exit list, although the size of exit demands that the organisation furnishes relevant details with the public.

Onto the criticism. Criticising the decision some observers say this decision will only afflict the poor furthermore in the wake of high inflation and poor economic growth. Well that’s just a populist critique since the whole idea of forced exit is to exit those beneficiaries from the system who don’t deserve these handouts.

Others have pointed out the need for data triangulation on the premise that absolute numbers don’t always tell the whole story on standalone basis. “An estranged spouse traveling abroad shouldn't affect a beneficiary, for example,” a policy observer noted. Another critic questioned the sagacity of exiting someone on the basis of traveling abroad once, when in fact someone could have gone on Hajj paid for by someone else.

This demands a close look at the list that Sania shared (see table). Some of those categories are clearly undeserving. For instance: government employees and their spouses; spouses having one or more vehicles registered against their names; average monthly telecom bill more than Rs1000. Others may be open to doubt. These include categories such as beneficiaries or spouses travelling abroad which combined equals about 64 percent of the total 0.82 million beneficiaries who have been shown the door.

Granted, some of these beneficiaries may have gone for Hajj or Umrah on someone else’s money, or even medical treatment abroad. But in relative terms, these errors are not likely to be significant. Hajj is not mandatory for those who cannot afford; besides when the total number of Haji’s from Pakistan isn’t more than 200,000 per annum, how many genuine beneficiaries may have gone for Hajj on someone else’s money. Likewise, the number of genuine beneficiaries having gone abroad for medical treatment is likely to be very small.

In state management, there is no such thing as a perfect system; even for-profit corporations that attract the best of talent for pure self-interest make mistakes all the times. Government policies and action require constant tinkering with a feedback loop.

Some genuine beneficiaries may have been forced to exit through Sania’s latest move but if such errors are within the normal range as defined by experts in this domain, then it may well be justified on the basis that so many new deserving beneficiaries can now be served as BISP’s budget opens up from these savings. Such are the realities of state management.

The BISP is for the poorest of the poor – the bottom of the pyramid. The poor above that threshold also deserve support and empathy but not through the BISP. The demand to clean BISP’s datasets is not new. Based on audit reports of BISP, BR Research had written about loss of public money even as early as 2015. (See BISP: a white elephant in the making, Jun 24, 2015). Lastly, while contrary to what many believe, former PM Benazir Bhutto’s name in the BISP doesn’t benefit the PPP. (See Citizenship and social welfare

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