Miftah unveils Economic Survey for 2017-18

ISLAMABAD: The Economic Survey for 2017-18, going to be unveiled by Prime Minister’s Adviser on Finance Miftah Ismail on Thursday (today), is all set to show decline in national poverty by 4 to 5 percent, bringing it down from 29.5 percent to below 25 percent population.

The Economic Survey 2017-18 will also incorporate the latest figures incurred on war against terror after Pakistan’s decision to stand with US in the aftermath of 9/11, 2001 episode. Pakistan’s total losses after becoming an ally of US might have crossed $125 billion mark in last 17 years as it stood at $123.13 billion till 2016-17.

“The latest poverty estimates and cost of war against terror will be part of the Economic Survey for 2017-18 which will be released on Thursday afternoon,” top official of the government confided to The News here on Wednesday.

Official sources confirmed to The News here on Wednesday that the government had constituted high-powered committee led by Dr G.M Arif to calculate the poverty on the basis of HIICS (Household Integrated Income Consumption Survey) done by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) in fiscal 2015-16 which found that the poverty declined from 29.5 percent to below 25 percent. However, the federal government will not release poverty figurers of four provinces.

There can be multiple reasons for not releasing the poverty figures but the sources confirmed that the last survey of 2015-16 showed that the poverty in PTI led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has declined significantly in the range of 8 to 10 percent in initial assessments so there are political reasons for hiding poverty figures on the basis of provinces.

The incumbent PML-N led regime had brought changes in methodology for calculating number of people living below the poverty line from food, energy intake (EFI) to Cost of Basic Needs (CBN) and had estimated that 29.5 percent population was living the poverty line on the basis of survey done in 2013-14. On the basis of new methodology, the poverty stood at 64.2 percent in 2001 during Musharraf regime which showed declining trends since 2001 and now touched below 25 percent in 2015-16.

When contacted to Planning Commission’s head of poverty committee Dr G.M Arif on Wednesday, he declined to share national poverty figures and asked this correspondent to wait for release of Economic Survey 2017-18. However, he admitted that the poverty committee should be expanded to bring representation of all provinces and the poverty figures of provinces should also be released in detailed report.

The sources said that an inter-ministerial committee had worked out exact cost incurring on war of terror after Pakistan’s decision to ally with US in its war against terror since 2001. During the last 16 years, the direct and indirect cost incurred by Pakistan due to incidents of terrorism amounted to $123.13 billion equivalent to Rs 10,373.93 billion since 2001-2.

This cost will definitely go up by few billion dollars after adding up losses incurred during the outgoing fiscal year 2017-18 but in return Pakistan had obtained peanuts from international community in last 17 years despite becoming main hub of conflict zone for several years.