ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The government on Thursday reiterated its resolve to bring down the poverty level to zero by adopting pro-poor investments, enhancing economic growth rate and further strengthening social safety nets.
“Poverty in Pakistan is declining”, said Finance Minister Senator Muhammad Ishaq Dar while addressing the participants of a seminar on “Poverty estimation methodology, poverty in Pakistan and understanding the trends and the way forward.”
Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms Ahsan Iqbal co-chaired the seminar with the Finance Minister.
Country Director of the World Bank Pochumuthu Illangovan, donors representatives and experts in poverty estimation issues, senior government officials also attended the seminar.
Ishaq Dar said that government has adopted new international best practices where the non-food items including health and education, have also been included in the new basing of poverty estimation.
He expressed the hope that this new poverty estimation methodology would be useful for the researchers and policy-makers in the country.
The Finance Minister said that due to prudent economic polices of the government, the poverty ratio has been showing downward trend and in future, it would further decline to the lowest level.
Ishaq Dar said that Pakistan has seen an exceptional decline in poverty in the last fifteen years, down from 35 percent in 2001-02 to under 10 percent in 2013-14.
Source: APP
