ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan is likely to visit a utility store in Islamabad to inaugurate the roll-out of ‘Ehsaas Rashan Riayat’ for low-income families on Saturday.

The country’s first ever targeted commodity subsidies programme is in line with the prime minister’s vision to provide relief to the masses and target government subsidies.

At the retail outlet, the prime minister will witness the digitally enabled ‘Ehsaas Rashan Riayat’ disbursal to eligible families.

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Senator Dr Sania Nishtar will brief him on the salient features of end-to-end digitised programme, which is the first of its kind worldwide.

Though the recent inflation is driven by rising prices in the international market, this still puts pressure on low income households. ‘Ehsaas Rashan Riayat’ will effectively lower prices by 30 per cent for three essential commodities - wheat flour, cooking oil/ghee and pulses.

The programme will disburse Rs106 billion in subsidies to 20 million eligible families this year, and 130 million people are expected to benefit.

So far, 19.5 million potential beneficiaries have been registered and are currently being verified whereas 0.52 million beneficiaries have already been informed about their eligibility.

On the other hand, 117,000 plus Kiryana retailers have also been registered and are currently being verified and around 2,300 of them are ready to disburse the subsidy.

National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) has been mandated to execute the programme. The commodity subsidy will be disbursed through a network of government-run utility stores as well as NBP-enabled Kiryana stores.

Ehsaas and NBP have developed a mobile point of sale application that enables processing of ration subsidies against the computerised national identity card number of a beneficiary through a real-time verification process.

Provincial governments of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir are participating in the programme.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2022