Rising poverty, food insecurity, inflation continue to haunt Pakistanis, says MoF

Pakistan continues to face five major and persistent economic challenges, resulting in rising poverty and social vulnerabilities, said the Ministry of Finance a day after the national assembly and the federal cabinet were dissolved. In its first quarterly performance report to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on $1.5bn Building Resilience with Active Country-cyclical Expenditures (BRACE) released on Thursday, the Ministry of Finance said the financial progress remained satisfactory on Countrycyclical Development Expenditure Programme (CDEP) in the quarter ending Dec 31, 2022 as 41.5pc of the budget for the fiscal, under social protection, was utilised. It said the current expenditures increased by 30pc to Rs6.061 trillion in July-December FY23 against Rs4.676tr in the comparable period of the last year. The bulk of this rise stemmed from a sharp rise in mark-up payments which grew by 77pc driven by higher servicing on domestic and foreign debt due to a higher level of interest rates. Public Sector Development Programme (federal and provincial) grew by just 4.5pc during the first half of the current fiscal year.