World Bank (WB) will approve $60 million technical assistance (TA) for Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) in the meeting of its 'Board of Governors' scheduled to be held in early June. Reliable sources told Business Recorder that the TA would not be more than $60 million and there would be no further lending.
"After 'Board of Governors' approval the Bank will release the amount to the government of Pakistan", sources informed. They said that the government has decided to start National Survey on Poverty from the first week of May.
According to a recent IMF Letter of Intent (LOI), the roll-out of the scorecard system for the selection of beneficiaries is expected to be completed in 16 districts as a pilot program by end-May 2009. The roll-out of the scorecard to all 130 districts is planned to be completed between December 2009 and June 2010. As the roll-out of BISP turned out to be more complicated than originally envisaged, BISP disbursements did not take place in the first half of the fiscal year.
LOI says, "Looking forward, the number of families benefiting from BISP cash transfers will be increased to 5 million in 2009/10 using the new scorecard system, implying budgetary expenditure of Rs 65 billion. For 2010/11, an increase in the number of beneficiary households to 7 million is envisaged. In addition, the province of Punjab is expected to continue its own program in FY 2009/10. The government is also considering reforming other components of the social safety net system, including the merger of the cash transfer component of Bait-ul-Mal with the BISP".
Earlier, in the Letter of Intent (LoI) submitted to the Board of International Monetary Fund (IMF) by the government of Pakistan as a prerequisite for the approval of the 7.6 billion dollars standby arrangement, Pakistan had committed to an increase in social safety net spending of 0.6 to 0.9 percentage points of GDP, and the BISP was an integral component of this.
The total budgetary allocation for BISP was Rs 34 billion but then the some BISP official started saying that the total allocation for BISP would increase from Rs 34 billion to Rs 77 billion after the contribution of Rs 43 billion in the programme by the World Bank.
The design of BISP has been already changed. Under the new design of BISP, the parliamentarians are no longer functional, and the deserving families would be identified by NRSP while according to the previous design of the programme formulated, 8000 forms per parliamentarian were distributed to recommend deserving families in their respective constituencies.
"But under the new design of the programme, a survey will be conducted by NRSP that would provide a questionnaire consisting of 30-35 questions that would be handed over to the families", sources said.
They added that the BISP might not provide relief to the deserving households as proxy means test (PMT) based on the methodology of scoring cards would not work in Pakistan.