Rs122b allocated for poverty alleviation

Islamabad

The government has allocated a total of 122.584 billion rupees for various poverty alleviation projects in the annual budget for financial year 2016-17.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, in his budget address in parliament on Friday, announced to double the grant for Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal from two billion rupees to four billion rupees and also announced to provide 115 billion rupees to the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) to assist poor families.

Besides, the government has also allocated another 1.584 billion rupees for Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) and two billion rupees for poverty fund, the budget documents says.

The government has increased 13 billion rupees for the BISP, which according to budget books received 102 billion rupees during the financial year of 2015-16. However, the documents note a decrease in the poverty alleviation fund from the previous year. The government allocated 2.149 billion rupees for the fund in 2015-16 but this year the grant has been limited to 1.584 billion rupees. A separate poverty fund, mentioned in the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) also saw a decrease of 2 billion rupees as this fund had been allocated four billion rupees during the previous year.

The budget also includes a separate grant of 100 billion rupees the temporarily displaced people and seven billion rupees for the Earthquake affected people's reconstruction and rehabilitation authority (Erra).