Weaknesses in BISP: clarification

Apropos editorial "Weaknesses in BISP" carried by Business Recorder on 14th November, 2014, the editorial primarily focuses on a survey conducted by Policy Research Institute of Market Economy to estimate the efficacy and effectiveness of "conditional cash transfer: The research reflects safety net as a welfare trap". The survey concluded that BISP had failed to provide social protection to the poorest households as 95 percent of the cash grant beneficiaries did not find the grants helpful in meeting their expenditures while 50 percent of the beneficiaries that they had to spend money to get the cash grant. It also held that instead of raising the living standards of the poor people, cash grants are increasing their dependence on the government funds.
It is worth mentioning that the research paper provides self-contrary statements. On the one hand, it says that the programme is promoting dependence whereas on the other hand, it says that the compensation amount is not sufficient to meet the livelihood expenditures. How can an insufficient amount create dependence as it cannot be the mainstay of any beneficiary family?
Research, especially estimation of effects/impacts of any intervention requires representative sample. It is quite different than that of an anecdotal writing. The sample selection has two major ingredients, ie, the sample size and its distribution. For a universe/sample space of overall Pakistan the size of 1,000 and its distribution in three northern districts is a highly non-representative and biased sample which may highly misleading rather depicting the true picture of prevailing variables/trends.
Internationally, the "conditional cash transfers" are taken as one of the primary tools of promoting human capital whereas the paper provides an entirely different correlation/analysis, contrary to the international research practices. There are numerous independent studies which rank BISP as an effective programme. The paper is highly assumption-based whereas the research requires learning approach (cognitive) for truly tracing the prevailing trends.
Although, BISP recognises the importance of such surveys and does not hesitate to follow the recommendations of such surveys for course correction, enhanced efficiency and effectiveness of the programme besides further improving its transparency. But, BISP has the right to refute such findings if found otherwise. It would be professionally more prudent to attach more weight to the findings of some other surveys and evaluations carried out on a larger scale and with a larger sample size. Since the survey was conducted in isolation and BISP will have meetings with the said survey firm to understand the objectives of the survey, its design, methodology and the validity and authenticity of the work. However, some historical facts and findings are given below in support of BISP being a strong programme and by no means is weaker to any programme of such size and quantum vis-à-vis transparency, effectiveness and productivity.
The slowdown of global economy in 2008 and rise in fuel and food prices and series of natural calamities particularly floods, severely impacted Pakistan's economy resulting in lower economic growth and spiralling inflation. The macroeconomic crisis in the country necessitated making social protection an urgent priority for the poor and vulnerable segments of society. With the objectives to attain both growth and equity, social protection is the best mechanism available to transfer the benefits of economic progress to the extremely poor and vulnerable people in order to make them part of the overall development process.
Historically, there have been a number of social protection programmes in Pakistan which addressed the issues of poverty, income inequality and vulnerability directly or indirectly but they were limited in their coverage, had weak administration, lacked targeting efficiency and did not have the ability to respond to shocks in a timely manner. Moreover, due to a lack of a holistic strategy, there was no single organisational or institutional structure responsible for shaping, directing, and co-ordinating government initiatives on safety nets. Earlier, attention was focused mainly on mitigating the impacts of shocks and assisting people most affected by these crises. But conversely, these crises opened the possibility of designing more resilient and inclusive safety net systems in Pakistan. It is in this context the government launched the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) in July 2008 with an immediate objective to cushion the negative effects of increasing prices of food and fuel on the poor, particularly women, and enable them to cope with losses associated with recurring floods in the country, through the provision of cash transfers of Rs 1,000 per month to eligible families. Moreover, the broader objective was to meet the redistributive goals of the country by providing a minimum income support package to the chronic poor and those affected by future shocks. The initial budget allocation for BISP in FY2008-09 was Rs 34 billion which doubled the spending of the government on social safety nets from FY2003-04 level of 0.3% of GDP to 0.6%.
The period since BISP's inception in 2008-09 is marked with rapid expansion and learning for the organisation. For example, setting up a national targeting system through BISP became a national priority. In December 2008, the government of Pakistan decided to improve the then parliamentarian-based targeting mechanism of BISP through the adoption of a "poverty scorecard", for the selection of beneficiaries, based on a 'proxy means testing' approach. Considering that nation-wide roll-out of the scorecard nation-wide was a gigantic task, a decision was therefore made to rollout the scorecard in February 2009 in a test phase comprising of 15 districts. This test phase provided useful insights and the necessary learning for fine tuning the poverty scorecard and scaling up the program nation-wide. The government expanded the budget for the programme from Rs 34 billion in 2008-09 to Rs 97.15 billion in FY2014-15 with commitment to cover 5.5 million families by the end of FY2014-15 with the ultimate goal of covering the 20% poorest of the population. The monthly cash assistance was also increased from Rs 1000 per month by the present government to Rs 1200 per month in FY2013-14 and to Rs 1500 per month in the current financial year.
It is pertinent to mention that various studies are being carried out about BISP to evaluate efficacy of the Programme and one such survey is the Impact Evaluation. The World Bank has provided technical assistance for the Impact Evaluation Survey and is being conducted by Oxford Policy Management (OPM) hired in March 2013 to conduct three follow-up surveys in 2013, 2014 and 2015 respectively to complete the Impact Evaluation of BISP's unconditional cash transfer programmes. The report for basic cash transfer indicates positive results such as: high level of beneficiary satisfaction with technology based payment mechanisms (debit card); substantial number of beneficiaries spending on basic necessities (food/nutrition - 84%, health - 60%, clothing -47%); low spending on education (5%) and savings (1%); and basic cash transfer covers only 40% of the poverty gap of households necessitating the introduction of graduation programmes.
As it is evident from the above, BISP is cognisant about the importance of investing in human capital and it is for this reason that BISP is currently carrying out various initiative like Waseela-e-Rozgar (technical and skill development), Waseela-e-Sehat (life and health insurance) and Waseela-e-Taleem (co responsibility cash transfer: primary education) to enhance capacity of the beneficiary families and to enable them earn independently.
Lastly, there are empirical evidences that the targeted cash subsidy should be fixed in such a manner that it should always strike a balance between absorbing shocks and reducing dependence. Absorbing shocks and reducing dependence always have positive economic impacts and an absence of social safety nets results in negative economic growth.