BISP – Nationwide Poverty Targeting Survey

Government of Pakistan has launched the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) as the main social safety net program to cushion the negative effects of the food crisis and inflation on the poor. The rapid launch of BISP shows the Government’s strong commitment to protect the poor and vulnerable from the impact of the economic crises.

The Government has introduced a Targeting Process that is objective, conforming to international best practices, minimizes the risk of major inclusion and exclusion errors and ensures its effective implementation. In addition, BISP has adopted a complementary verification tool based on the NADRA database to check the quality of the data collection in the field.

For identifying the poor and vulnerable; a set of proxy mean of indicators were used through applying the Poverty Score Card (PSC) at the household level. PSC form was filled for every household in the district to assess each household’s poverty status. It was an extensive census exercise and there were several actors for this activity with distinguished term of references. These include:

• RSPs for the data collection
• NADRA for data entry, verification, and analysis
• Spot check consultants (To monitor the activity for its accuracy)
• Consultant for evaluation of targeting process