The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) has requested a budgetary allocation of Rs 115 billion for the fiscal year 2016-17 to ensure an increase in its beneficiaries' number and meet expenses of a resurvey.
An official of the BISP told the Business Recorder on Thursday that a demand for an earmarking of Rs 115 billion in the budget had been sent to the Ministry of Finance for approval and they were hopeful to get it. The federal government allocated Rs 102 billion for the BISP in the fiscal budget for the year 2015-16, while an amount of Rs 387 billion had been disbursed so far to the BISP beneficiaries since the programme began in 2008.
The official said that an extra Rs 13 billion would be spent to increase the number of beneficiaries from 5.2 million to 5.7 million by the end of the next fiscal year. He said the government might also announce an increase of Rs 200 to Rs 300 in monthly cash grant to the beneficiaries, but major chunk of the increased budget would also be utilised for a countrywide resurvey to include more beneficiaries and exclude fake beneficiaries.
Each beneficiary of the programme is currently receiving Rs 4,700 per quarter (Rs 1,566 per month).
The official said the resurvey was going to begin from June 15 from Haripur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the exercise was expected to be completed by March 2018.
He, however, said the BISP was not going to restart its abandoned programmes such as Waseela-e-Haq and Waseela-e-Rozgar nor to initiate any new project in the next fiscal year.