Finance adviser to unveil Economic Survey for 2017-18 today

Finance adviser to unveil Economic Survey for 2017-18 today

ISLAMABAD: The Economic Survey for the outgoing fiscal year (2017-18) is going to be unveiled by Prime Minister’s Adviser on Finance Miftah Ismail today.

The report is all set to show a decline in national poverty by four to five per cent, bringing it down from 29.5 per cent to below 25 per cent of the population.

The Economic Survey 2017-18 will also incorporate the latest figures incurred in the war against terror. Pakistan’s total losses after becoming part of the war might have crossed the $125 billion mark in the last 17 years as it stood at $123.13 billion till 2016-17.

“The latest poverty estimates and cost of war against terror will be part of the Economic Survey for 2017-18 which will be released on Thursday afternoon,” a top official of the government confided to The News here on Wednesday.

Official sources confirmed to The News that the government had constituted a high-powered committee led by Dr GM Arif to calculate the poverty on the basis of HIICS (Household Integrated Income Consumption Survey) done by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) in fiscal 2015-16 which found that the poverty declined from 29.5 per cent to below 25 per cent. However, the federal government will not release poverty figurers of four provinces.

There can be multiple reasons for not releasing the poverty figures but the sources confirmed that the last survey of 2015-16 showed that the poverty in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has declined significantly in the range of eight to 10 per cent in initial assessments so there are political reasons for hiding poverty figures on the basis of provinces as KP is ruled by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.

The incumbent federal government had brought changes in methodology for calculating the number of people living below the poverty line from food, energy intake (EFI) to Cost of Basic Needs (CBN) and had estimated that 29.5 per cent population was living the poverty line on the basis of survey done in 2013-14. On the basis of new methodology, the poverty stood at 64.2 per cent in 2001 during General (Retd) Pervez Musharraf's regime which showed declining trends since 2001 and now touched below 25 per cent in 2015-16.

When contacted, the Planning Commission’s head of poverty committee Dr GM Arif declined to share national poverty figures and asked for the release of Economic Survey 2017-18. However, he admitted that the poverty committee should be expanded to bring representation of all provinces and the poverty figures of provinces should also be released in a detailed report.

The sources said that an inter-ministerial committee had worked out exact cost incurring on the war against terror since 2001. During the last 16 years, the direct and indirect cost incurred by Pakistan due to incidents of terrorism amounted to $123.13 billion equivalent to Rs10,373.93 billion since 2001-2.

This cost will definitely go up by few billion dollars after adding up losses incurred during the outgoing fiscal year 2017-18 but in return, Pakistan had obtained peanuts from the international community in the last 17 years despite becoming a main hub of the conflict zone for several years.