Govt reluctant to release poverty figures before polls

from The News International

By Mehtab Haider

ISLAMABAD: Sidestepping its commitment with the donors, the government is dillydallying the process for analysing the poverty figures in accordance with the latest survey for avoiding any new controversy before the January 8 elections. Although, the government had incorporated some findings of the Pakistan Social and Living-Standard Measurement (PSLM) survey, related to social indicators in the Economic Survey 2006-07, but after several months, the Federal Bureau of Statistics has not yet forwarded the data related to household income and expenditure survey (HIES) to the Center for Poverty Reduction and Income Distribution (CPRID).

"We will take a couple of months more for forwarding the data related to HIES portion to the CPRID of the Planning Commission, which is mainly responsible to find out the poverty figures on the basis of the PSLM survey," a high-level official told The News on Saturday.

The CPRID is seeking the data of the PSLM survey for 2005-06 about the income and expenditures (HIES portion), on the basis of which poverty is analyzed, another official said. The official said that the government wanted to release the data after the next general elections in order to avoid new controversy over it.

Poverty figures have always remained controversial in the recent past as the government and donors possessed divergent views on methodology and the authenticity of data collection to analyze poverty figures.

After hectic efforts, the government had reconciled its poverty figures with the donors last year. The government and the donors had agreed on certain methodology for analyzing the poverty figures and no change would be made in this regard as it could distort the whole previous exercise.

The donors have pointed out in the working group of the CPRID for analyzing poverty figures last time that the poverty figures of 2001 were found at a time when there was a severe drought and the last survey was done when Pakistan achieved the highest growth trajectory. So comparison of these two periods cannot tell the whole truth.

Then the international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the WB, ADB, DFID and others asked the government to analyze the situation regularly without changing the adopted methodology in order to come up with the exact situation, a high-level official says.

Now the government is again dragging its feet to fulfill its commitment made by Islamabad with the donors to release the poverty figures on the basis of PSLM survey so that things could be analyzed on the basis of a frequent series. But official circles also say that India released its poverty figures after a five-to-six-year period and there was no need to come up with the latest figures after every year or on couple of year basis.

When the acting DG of FBS, Abdul Hakeem Mukhdoom, was contacted for comments, he said the data was under preparation, which would be forwarded to the CPRID in the next couple of months. He also advised this journalist not to write on this topic.

The government, the official said, had already collected the data from almost 78,000 households, but it was not forwarding it to the Planning Commission's CPRID, which is basically responsible for conducting the poverty analysis in consultation with representatives of multilateral and bilateral creditors.

The government had partially released the findings of the PSLM survey 2005-06 related to social indicators, but its portion of HIES data had not yet been made public.

The Planning Commission, the sources said, had not yet released the provincial poverty figures on the basis of 2004-05 survey in which Islamabad claimed to have reduced poverty from 34% in 2001 to 23.9% in 2004-05 at the national level.

But the federal government never allowed the release of poverty figures related to the four federating units. The government is reluctant to release the poverty figures of the federating units to avoid backlash from the smaller provinces, claimed the official sources.

The CPRID had prepared its analysis on the basis of the PSLM survey related to poverty figures for the provinces, and these figures were forwarded to the Planning Commission, when Akram Malik was assuming the charge as Secretary Planning Commission, which were never made public.

On the other side, the World Bank conducted its own analysis and its estimates, which were also tabled before the government of Pakistan, showed that the poverty level was almost stagnant in the Punjab during 2000-01 and 2004-05 as it stood at 30.6 percent in 2000-01 and 29.5 percent in 2004-05.

The former chief minister, Punjab, Ch Pervaiz Elahi, had claimed that the poverty in the province decreased by 11%, but the analysis done by the World Bank did not favour it.

According to the WB, in 2000-01, Punjab's urban poverty was 22.8 percent and 33.8 percent in rural areas, which stood at 21.2 percent in urban areas and 33.4 percent in rural areas in 2004-05.

The WB analysis shows the poverty in Sindh declined significantly from 37.4 percent in 2000-01 to 22.4 percent in 2004-05. The poverty in urban Sindh was 20.6 per cent in 2000-01, which declined to 13.8 percent in 2004-05.

The rural poverty in the province was 48.1 per cent in 2000-01, which was reduced to 28.9 percent in 2004-05. The WB estimates show the overall poverty in the NWFP was 42.3 percent in 2000-01, with urban poverty of 29.9 percent and rural poverty at 44.4 percent, which reduced up to 39.3 percent in 2004-05. The rural poverty in the NWFP was 41.9 percent while urban poverty 26.1 percent in 2004-05.

The bank estimates reveal that the overall poverty in Balochistan was 37.1 percent in 2000-01 with urban poverty of 27.4 percent and rural poverty at 37.1 percent. The overall poverty reduced to 32.9 percent in 2004-05 with urban poverty of 21.5 percent and rural poverty of 35.8 percent in Balochistan.