World Bank validates Pakistan''s poverty estimates

The World Bank has validated the Pakistan''s official poverty estimates as published recently in the Pakistan Survey 2005-06, World Bank sources said here on Thursday. The government has maintained consistency with past measures using the same poverty line and inflation indices as used for the 2000-2001 estimates.
Using this same methodology, the latest government estimates show poverty to have fallen from 34.4 percent to 24 percent. "It is clear that poverty has indeed fallen sharply between 2000-01 and 2004-05. Of course, there are other ways to calculate poverty estimates useful for analytical purposes but using the same methodology for the official estimates is important to maintain comparatively over years," said John Wall, World Bank Country Director for Pakistan.