DFID lauds BISP performance by giving it overall ‘A’ rating

Islamabad

Department for International Development (DFID), the development partner of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), in its Annual Review Report 2015-16 has commended the performance of BISP by rating the overall performance of the programme as A.

The report highlights that BISP met all of the Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLIs) on time and made substantial progress on institutional reforms, Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) and other initiatives.

DFID is providing up to 279 million pounds in non-budget support financial aid and 21 million pounds in technical assistance to BISP whereas 87% of BISP funding is provided by the government of Pakistan.

The report appreciates the commitment of the incumbent government towards poorest of the poor in terms of consistently increased financial resource allocation for BISP. The government’s expenditure on BISP was equivalent to 0.35% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 3 per cent of the Federal tax revenues, and 19 per cent of the entire Federal Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) in 2015-16. The report highlights that active engagement of the Chairperson, BISP Board and the senior management has resulted in continuous expansion of the programme.

During the review year, BISP beneficiaries increased from 5.2 million to 5.4 million. There has been commendable improvement in regularity of the payments to beneficiaries since last annual review. In 2015-16, 99.7 per cent beneficiaries received all four quarterly payments in the first week of the third month of each quarter. The programme improved economy, efficiency and effectiveness across its operations with National Socio-Economic Registry (NSER) update and Biometric Verification System (BVS) being the most important system level reforms.

The performance of CCT initiative exceeded expectation and has been rated as A+. The number of children enrolled increased from 0.7 million to over 1.3 million in 32 districts during 2015-16. All the DLIs were met as 633,155 girls and 683,572 boys were supported through Waseela-e-Taleem for their primary education during the year. 98 per cent of the complaints were resolved using technology based system. Moreover, 49000 BISP Beneficiary Committees (BBCs) were formed for social mobilisation.

Referring to the Impact Evaluation Reports of BISP, the annual review report states that BISP has shown a positive impact on poverty reduction, increased expenditure on food, health, education and women empowerment. As per evaluation, the poverty gap reduced by 3 per cent in BISP families and female beneficiaries play a more active role in decision making in their households. The programme also contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals of No Poverty, Zero Hunger, Quality Education, Gender Equality and reduced inequalities.