Though the World Bank has validated Pakistan's 10 percentage points poverty reduction and has termed it a sharp drop on Wednesday it stressed upon the government to extend the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data collection network (used for poverty measurement) to more cities, especially the rural areas, in order to have reliable indicator.
Talking to a group of journalists here on Wednesday after the signing of technical assistance five million pounds sterling between DFID and World Bank to support Pakistan in poverty reduction, John Wall, WB's country director in Pakistan, said that CPI has a limited coverage and only focuses on urban areas, excluding the rural areas, which makes data less reliable.
To get a true picture, the survey should be extended to the rural areas, and more products be included, he added.
He said that the Bank had validated two different numbers, ie CPI based survey, which gives 10 percentage points poverty reduction, and products survey giving 5 percentage points reduction during last four years, but both indicators have limitations--the former covers a particular area, and the latter shows limited products coverage.
He said that the government's poverty data was not only validated by the bank but also by other donor agencies including UK's Department for International Development (DFID) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) on a number of occasions.
Wall said that if the rural areas were included in CPI survey, it would give the true picture of poverty reduction. It is possible that 10 percentage points figure may come down, he added.
Interestingly, John Wall said, during the last 10 years, almost in all South Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and India, poverty had declined, on average, by 10 percentage points, too. However, the progress in Pakistan was remarkable, which reduced poverty by 10 percentage points in only four years. He said that validity of the statistics and surveys was doubted not only in Pakistan but also in other Third World countries, and even in developed and industrialised world.