'Pakistan's Poverty Level Jumps To 11-Year High Amid Govt Claims Of Economic Revival'

(MENAFN- IANS) New Delhi, Feb 23 (IANS) While the Pakistan government claims that the country's economy has been revived from the brink and is now stable, the harsh reality is that poverty has climbed to an 11-year high of 29 per cent and income inequality is at levels not seen in nearly three decades, according to an article in the Pakistani media.

The article in the Lahore-based The Friday Times further pointed out that real household incomes have shrunk and unemployment is at a 21-year peak. For millions of families, "stability" feels indistinguishable from suffocation.

"This is not a contradiction. It is the central paradox of Pakistan's economic moment. The country has stabilised, but it has not healed," it stated.

The IMF programme imposed discipline where domestic politics had repeatedly failed. This resulted in a cut in subsidies, an increase in energy prices, and the monetary policy was tightened. These steps resulted in slowing the bleeding of the economy.

"But stabilisation is not the same as recovery. It is emergency care, not rehabilitation," the report remarked.

It pointed out that when subsidies vanish, and indirect taxes rise, the burden does not fall evenly. It lands hardest on those already stretched thin - lower-middle-income earners, daily wage workers, small traders. Inflation may be "contained" now, but the damage of the surge remains embedded in daily life. Food, electricity, fuel - essentials became luxuries. And wages did not keep pace.

The result is visible in the poverty numbers. Seventy million people are now officially below the poverty line. In rural areas, more than a third of the population struggles to meet basic needs. In Balochistan, nearly half. This is not cyclical discomfort; it is structural erosion, it noted.

Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal has conceded that stabilisation policies contributed to the spike in poverty. Fiscal consolidation and currency devaluation are blunt instruments. They restore balance sheets, but they squeeze households, the article added.

Yet blaming the IMF alone misses the larger truth. Pakistan's vulnerability did not begin with this programme. It is the product of decades of avoidance. For years, successive governments, civilian and otherwise, chose expediency over reform. Instead of broadening the tax base, they leaned on the already compliant. Instead of restructuring loss-making state enterprises, they subsidised inefficiency. Instead of investing consistently in export competitiveness, they relied on remittances and short-lived consumption booms, the article lamented.

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