Poverty line in Pakistan

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Poverty use to be 14 ~ 15 percent in 1990. Ganja and Budnazar has done such a nice job that it has doubled. Actually the only improvement made in the opposite direction under our great leaders if you can call them leaders. 100 percent improvment.. LOL…

Poverty in Pakistan persists at 33 percent since 1998-99: Asian Bank

RECORDER REPORT ( http://www.businessrecorder.com/ )

ISLAMABAD (January 29 2003) : The level of poverty in Pakistan was around 33 percent in 1998-99 and has not improved since then, according to ADB assessment.

Answering a question at a press conference here on Tuesday, Resident Mission chief M Ali.

Shah said that the assessment was made some four years ago. According to it the rural poverty was assessed at 40 percent, he said.

During these years, he assumed, the poverty level continued at the same level, because the overall growth of economy since then was not substantial, while unemployment continued to plague the economy.

“Has it worsened?” was the next question to Shah, who said that one could assume it might have worsened for lack of economic growth and investment.

The press conference was jointly addressed by Shah and the visiting ADB executive Y. Iwasaki, Director-General South Asia Department, who briefed about the ADB’s new programme for the current year.

Iwasaki said that poverty has various facets. The income-based poverty level is a complex issue.

Income below one dollar a day is an important indicator, but not the entire indicator.

How deep poverty is at one dollar a day, less than a dollar and fifty cents a day are difficult to assess.

Then there is another dimension of poverty like availability of education, primary health care or drinking water, etc.

According to him the ADB is focusing on the human conditions which seem to be improving.

Iwasaki said that the mission would discuss the poverty issue with the government.

The team is expected to meet the finance adviser to PM, Shaukat Aziz, on Wednesday.

It may be mentioned that the ADB poverty assessment published in August 2002 identified poor governance as a prime cause of poverty in Pakistan.

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Re: Poverty line in Pakistan

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

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Re: Re: Poverty line in Pakistan

Here is one source which claims 20%, quite a few more with different figures. more latter… Yes! Pakistan

Another one 17% http://www.isb.sdnpk.org/news/02aug26/item24.htm
hinduonnet.com - This website is for sale! - hinduonnet Resources and Information.

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We had less poverty in the 80s because our annual GDP was 6%+, therefore, we have to go back to the same development, growth route in order to create more jobs for the people.

Last time I checked GDP was 3.5%.

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^ Good point PT.

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it is always funny to see simple numbers such as 10 20 30 40 etc % used to express level of poverty. these are meaningless because of the thousands of assumptions made at so many levels - cannot even be used as general indicators. so you will find sources that claim 17% and others claiming 71% poverty for the same period in same place.

point is, is pakistan pakistan and India very poor? yes

is the situation improving? don't know about pakistan but in India it is improving slowly.

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In some parts of Pakistan, poverty level is 50%.

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Dont forget people that even though our GDP was high in the early 80's but on the other hand our population was almost of half of what it is today.

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About 2 years back I saw a program in ABC television - which was something like "Why we (Americans) are rich and some other countries are poor". They took 3 examples one USA , another HongKong and thirdly a Poor country.

They showed several interviews, analysis etc. The final result was the country which has more freedom to start new projects and has least red-tapism prospers fast. They were showing that a person in HongKong can register his business , get all the permissions , get all required conenctions such as telephone, electricity etc in a day. In USA you can get all these within 3 days. It encourages people to start new ventures and produce more jobs.

Whereas in Pak-India-Bangla it is a hassle to start anything afresh. You have to bribe so many people just to get your business up and running. Infrastructure projects such as construction of dams or roads drag on for decades because too many procedures to follow in Government level..

Suppose you make lots of money in another country and you want to go and start some venture back in your home town imagine the kind of obstacles you have to face from govt offices so very few people even try it.

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Rifak you are right. In Pak the standard reply in any government office be it the Met department or the Revenue office is "Kall aein" (Come back tommorrow). Even at 10 in the morning they will tell you with a straight face "Woh jee aaj to time khatam ho gaya hai....aap aisa karain keh kall aein."

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Thats true this is exactly what they say “kal ana” or “saab nahin hey” :hehe:

We had a problem with our phone may be it was a phone line problem. My cousin reported the issue and basically was given a run around. He gave them few notes with Quaids picture on it.. By the time we got home the techies had already been to our site and fixed the problem.

Now this is what you call service second to none! you will not find such efficency even in US… :hehe:

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Same problem was there in Indian Telephone department too.. At one point of time we had to wait like 2-3 months to get telephone connection.

But now see once Govt slowly started privatising Telecom sector - suddenly market is flooded with Cell phone operators and long distance service providers who are offering long distance rates 1/3 the price of Govt contrlled ones. Now Govt telecom department has become very efficient. Believe it or not you get connection the same day. Because no longer it is monopoly. This sector has generated thousands of jobs.

Same thing with IT sector in India which has very minimal interferance from Govt. So it has provided many employment opportunities. But in Govt revenue departments it is so old story. Exactly like "Kal Ayen" as you said. I see great improvements in all sectors which are not controlled by Government. Inefficiency in Govt departments is gift from British Raj. They were ruling us thru their departments and whoever working in Govt departments were gods. In USA you elect your judge, your police chief, your education department head. So they are responsible and they have to show results.

In our part of world we have mistaken notion that just by giving money to poor we can alleviate poverty. This is not true. Govt gives lots of subsidy to poor people. But they remain poor and ask more and more money. Creation of more and more employment is the only option to remove poverty. This can be done only if Govt encourages people to start ventures which generate employment by removing lots of unwanted obstacles.