The economically vulnerable and socially deprived population is considerably large in Pakistan; BISP was launched in 2008 to provide basic cash stipend to the poorest of the poor. In a recent joint event of Nestle and BISP, the success of Nestle pilot in BISP’s graduation programme was showcased in BISP Islamabad premises.This opens up a new avenue for BISP to move up the ladder from partially filling subsistence level needs to economically empower them.

The BISP is providing a quarterly cash stipend of $48 (Rs4,834) to 5.7 million chronically poor women. The sum is not enough; but the pool of poor is too large to feed. The BISP primarily funded by federal government has tripled its budget in dollar terms to $1.2 billion since inception. But, there is a limit to which a fiscally strapped federal government can contribute.

The idea should be to gradually starting providing earning opportunities for the vulnerable to have a meaningful long term sustainable impact on poor households.The BISP graduation programme is aimed to empower poor women by climbing up the ladder from cash stipend to self earning models.

But it is hard for the government to do all by itself. This is similar to big infrastructure projects where neither government nor private companies can conceive, execute and run the mega projects alone. Similarly, empowering poor women needs adaptive models of public private partnership as well.

In Pakistan, rich are reluctant to pay their due share of taxes but have a big heart for philanthropy as the country is amongst the lowest in terms of tax collection to GDP, while on the top in terms of charity to GDP. However, that is an inefficient model, as the government has the information and means to provide basic social amenities to the vulnerable with minimum wastage.

The BISP is the right platform for rich philanthropists to contribute and more importantly big companies to serve communities in their business operating areas under the ambit of CSR.

The BISP graduation model (BGM) enables the cash grant recipients to graduate into income earning individuals through self employment or wage employment.

The idea is to reduce the income poverty and to gradually wean off graduating women from unconditional cash stipends programme.

There are two interventions proposed in the model - one is business incubation for self employment and other is direct cash support for business start ups.

The corporate sector can be instrumental in their line of businesses to scale up business incubation for self employment. The BISP has the data set of vulnerable household and a mechanism to effectively reach them. The corporate sector has business models and requisite infrastructure in respective regions to specifically train and provide self employment opportunities. The BISP is aiming to train 100,000 women under self employment programme.

Rural population is 61 percent of the country and within, it the female labour participation is mere 16.8 percent.For the country to grow sustainability over 7 percent, the women labour participation has to be increased to around 45-50 percent to reach the level of Vietnam

Nestle Pakistan under company’s creating share value initiative signed an MOU with BISP in May 17 to financially empower women in rural Pakistan. To date, 250 BISP beneficiaries in Punjab and Sindh have become rural sales agents by selling Nestle fortified products at a low cost in their respective communities
Nestle’s target is to reach 1000 women by end of 2018. And the model is required to be emulated by others to meet the BISP target to reach 100,000 women. Way to go.