ISLAMABAD, March 20: Contrary to official claims, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) say that poverty has increased in Pakistan since 2004 and the new government should take the issue seriously.

Sources told Dawn on Thursday that the banks planned to offer $600 million conditional funding to the new government to check the trend by associating “credible private sector organisations” in the effort.

Both the donors want their new funding to be channelled through the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF), micro-finance banks and reputed non-government organisations.

The World Bank and the ADB would also ensure that their new assistance was utilised in a transparent manner and that complaints of financial irregularities must be addressed by the incoming federal and provincial governments, the sources said.

The funding will be for a three-year period.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Q government had claimed that poverty had been reduced from 33 per cent to 23 per cent and unemployment from over 10 per cent to seven per cent.

However, the World Bank and the ADB maintained that poverty had declined only by five percentage points by 2004.

A PPAF official said he did not want to go into the controversy about the figures but efforts were being made to lower the menace of poverty. He said that the private organisation had been offered over $700 million soft loan by the World Bank over the past few years. “Our work has been appreciated and now we expect a bigger World Bank funding,” he said.

He said the new funding would help develop 100,000 new communities to be offered small loans for poverty reduction, health and education.

Former director of Pakistan Institute of Development Economists, Dr A.R. Kamal, said there was some reduction in poverty during 2000-4 but the government’s claim of 10 percentage points reduction was controversial.

“But the more worrying thing is that there has been no poverty alleviation since 2004. Perhaps it has increased and many people believe so,” he said.

He said there is no data available to gauge the government’s claim of poverty reduction.