Govt to allocate Rs200 bn for Ehsaas programme, BISP next year

ISLAMABAD: Eyeing on the negative impacts of lingering Covid-19 pandemic, the government has decided to allocate Rs200 billion support fund for the Ehsaas Emergency Cash Programme and Banazir Income Support Programme (BISP) for the next fiscal budget 2020-21 in order to protect vulnerable segments of the society.

So far to identify the genuine beneficiaries is still a challenge as the last population census-2017 results were not yet officially approved, while, the labour force survey 2018-19 of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) was not yet made public.

When the population census, labour force survey and NADRA’s data was synchronised and available, then it would be easy to identify the eligible persons for getting financial benefits. “We expect that the coverage of BISP program will be further expanded as the ongoing survey of scorecard will be completed and number of beneficiaries will be increased manifold,” official sources told ‘The News’ on Wednesday.

The official said the government was expecting an increased number of unemployed daily wagers and labourers and that estimation suggesting 12 to 19 million workforce might lose their jobs after the pandemic. He said the government would have to increase allocation for social supports in order to cater the requirements of poor in the post Covid-19 situation.

The Finance Division proposed Rs200 to Rs215 billion for the Ehsaas Emergency Cash Programme and Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) in the next fiscal budget 2020-21. The utilisation of funds remained dismally slow in the first eight months in the pre-Covid-19 situation but after the outbreak, the government had diverted these resources through Ehsaas Emergency Cash Programme.

The federal cabinet had also approved cash emergency for 12 million families to the tune of Rs12,000 per family with estimated cost of Rs144 billion. There are three categories for dividing the beneficiaries, including 4.5 million Kafalat beneficiaries as one time tranche, second category poverty threshold to identify four million and category three 3.5 million identified from district data. The distribution of beneficiaries would be done on the basis of results of the 2017 population census.

On increasing poverty, the planning commission in a submitted report before the National Coordination Committee (NCC) stated that poverty is measured in Pakistan through household consumption expenditure on food and non-food items. The simulations showed that if annualised aggregate consumption of households goes down by 5 per cent in scenario-I, poverty headcount will rise from the existing 24.3 per cent to 29 per cent and in case of 10 per cent reduction in household consumption, the poverty could rise up to 33.5 per cent in post Covid-19 situation. Consumption is the smoother function and it hardly responds to short-term fluctuation of one quarter. In this case assumption of 5 per cent decrease in consumption is harsh, but even in this case around 10 million people will fall below the poverty line.

During the pandemic and post-crisis periods, short-term income losses will be offset by unprecedented rise in social safety nets. The government has extended outreach of its cash transfers to 12 million households from the existing five million. It means the government has extended its support to 78 million people, which is more than 32 per cent of the population. This will be the largest cash transfer in this region in terms of support and coverage, it concluded.