Poverty swells to 40pc: Sardar Aseff

[Naveed Yaseen]

Planning Commission deputy chairman says; $5.28bn pledges made at Tokyo donors moot are all grants

By Khalid Mustafa
ISLAMABAD: Poverty in Pakistan has increased to 40 per cent and every second citizen is living below the poverty line, which is an alarming development, Deputy Chairman Sardar Aseff Ahmad Ali said on Thursday.

He was talking to media persons after the conclusion of a one-day workshop on ‘Results of Social Health Protection Mapping and Health Financing.’

“Although there exists some controversy over poverty figure, but it ranges somewhere between 38 and 40 per cent as per World Bank estimates,” he said.

When asked as to when the World Bank has come up with the latest estimates about poverty incidence despite the fact that World Bank has just initiated a poverty census in certain districts of the country to ensure the distribution of the amount under Benzair Income Support Programme transparent, Ali responded and stressed that the poverty hovers even more than 40 per cent in the country.

“I’ve read the document of the World Bank according to which the poverty has increased. However, the final figure would be furnished once the poverty census process that the World Bank has initiated gets completed,” he said.

He said this year 3.5 million households will get the benefit of the Benazir Income Support programme and next year the number beneficiaries will increase to seven million households.

Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission unveiled that all the pledges amounting to $5.28 billion made in the donors moot in Tokyo are 100 per cent grants as per his preliminary information.

Regarding social sector spending, he said the government is about to come up with the 10th 5-year plan that is to be named Peoples Five Years Development Plan.

Under the plan human resource development programme will be kicked off and to this effect the government will establish 127 training and vocational centres in every district. And after five-year time, Pakistan will have 2.5 million skilled workers every year. The expertise of the said skilled workers would not be less than international standards.

This will increase their capacity to earn more that will help erase the regional and economic disparities.

Sardar Aseff Ali appreciated Germany based NGO GTZ for completing the survey of National Heath Accounts in Pakistan saying it has dispelled the impression of some of the world organizations that Pakistan’s spending on health sector has always been very low.

He said that GTZ being an independent institution came up with the findings that Pakistan has spent much more against the reported figures of the international organizations.

Regarding 25.7 million tonnes of wheat that country would have this time as per the survey carried out by Punjab Lok Sujag and South Asia Partnership Pakistan, Aseff Ali said that as per his estimates the country’s wheat production would hover around 24 million tonnes.

As for proposal to export the wheat, he said he will not endorse this idea instead he will advocate for increasing the wheat strategic reserves and for this purpose the government is planning to increase the storage capacity for 3.5 million tonnes of wheat.

The main storages would be established in various parts of the country under Public Private Partnership scheme, he said.

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