ISLAMABAD: The government is gearing up to launch a ‘Pakistan Crisis Resilient Social Protection’ programme that will advance the country’s social protection system to make it an adaptive, crisis-resilient system and move towards generation of programmes beyond social assistance by extending to the ‘missing middle’.

Moving to a more effective and responsive social protection system is expected to promote Covid-19 recovery and enable timely action in the event of future vulnerable to shocks, according to the project document on the proposed programme submitted to the World Bank for financing.

The proposed programme will rely on similar implementation arrangements as the ongoing Bank funded National Social Protection Programme, with the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) playing the leading role since it is responsible for the majority of the social protection interventions and delivery systems.

Specifically, the programme will build-in greater innovation and technology within the social protection to strengthen the social registry, optimise the use of big data, and advance delivery system components, including the payment systems, the social registry and related information system.

Initiative expected to promote Covid-19 recovery

The National Socioeconomic Registry (NSER) is currently a static social registry which is undergoing its first nationwide update and downstream recertification process of BISP programmes for the first time after being established in 2010. The NSER’s ability to predict welfare status and the targeting performance of the programmes that used it have deteriorated over time due to the large time lag in updating the NSER.

Integration of big data and analytics into the social registry would be supported to improve the targeting performance of social programmes. Recent advances in data collection and ability to interface with different data sources also have an enormous untapped potential to improve targeting by providing a wealth of information to complement existing social registries and better identify the needs of different population groups.

This results area would also support advances in the biometric payment system, including technological innovations, to promote greater financial inclusion among women. BISP recently overhauled the payment system to introduce a completely biometrically verified system that can be linked to a savings account upon the beneficiary’s request and supports the ‘One woman, one account’ government agenda.

Supporting the next generation of social protection interventions targeting the ‘missing middle’ innovative hybrid social protection mechanisms will be developed under the programme.

It has been proposed that memorandum of understandings with the provincial health and education departments, as well as service providers, to clearly stipulate roles and responsibilities, not only at the provincial level, but also at the district level. Social mobilisation policy will be updated and implemented as new hybrid social protection programmes are devised.

The proposed programme is aligned with the World Bank’s support in Pakistan, including the overall response to Covid-19, including the recently approved Develop­ment Policy Credit Securing Human Investments to Foster Transfor­mation, as it supports operationalisation of some of the policy actions for improving national safety nets for efficient response to shocks.

Published in Dawn, December 14th, 2020