ISLAMABAD: In order to benefit more people, government would increase allocation for the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) in the budget for 2015-16, federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said on Saturday.

Talking to country chief of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) Richard Montgomery, the minister said the contributions made by donors and development partners had helped in expanding the programme.

Under the programme, a monthly stipend of $15 is provided to each of about 4.8 million deserving families.

More than $2.9 billion has been disbursed to date under the programme, and about 93 per cent of the beneficiaries receive cash through technology-based payment mechanisms.

The government planned to reach 5.5 million families in the next financial year, sources said.

Mr Dar and Mr Montgomery discussed expanding the outreach of the BISP.

The DFID has been supporting the BISP right from the beginning. It approved a World Bank-managed trust fund in 2009 to support the test phase of the Poverty Score Card and set up the initial organisational and operational arrangements for implementing the BISP project. It provided nine million pounds for the purpose.

Mr Montgomery praised the government’s efforts to bring about improvements in the social sector with special reference to recent upgrading of the country’s economic outlook by the S&P.

He assured the minister that his organisation would continue to support development project in Pakistan.

The social safety net (BISP) has successfully established a ‘National Socio-Economic Registry’ through the use of an objective targeting system, hosting a database of more than 27m households or about 167m people — the first of its kind in South Asia.

More than 30 federal and provincial social sector programmes are currently using the registry to improve their performance.

The BISP has also rolled out the ‘Co-responsibility Cash Transfers programme linking cash transfers to primary school education, which is being implemented in 32 districts.

Following a successful pilot project in five districts, enrolment process is currently under way in 24 districts. To date more than 726,000 children have been enrolled under the programme of which over 329,000 children have been admitted to schools.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2015

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