Pakistan has become very poor, World Bank shows a horrific picture of poverty, army is eating up loan money
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The new figures of the World Bank are telling the different conditions of India and Pakistan. While poverty has decreased rapidly in India, it has increased terribly in Pakistan. Between 2012 and 2022, extreme poverty in India decreased from 27.1% to 5.3%. During this period, 26.9 crore people came out of poverty. On the contrary, in Pakistan, extreme poverty increased from 4.9% to 16.5% between 2017 and 2021. The Indian economy has become the fourth largest economy in the world, leaving behind Japan. On the other hand, Pakistan’s economy has to repeatedly take bailout packages from the IMF. World Bank figures show how poor an ordinary Pakistani has become today.
More people have come out of poverty in India than the Pakistani population
The World Bank report has set a new scale to measure poverty. Now people with an income of less than $ 3 per person per day will be considered ‘extremely poor’. Despite this new scale, poverty has decreased in India. Between 2012 and 2022, extreme poverty in India decreased from 27.1% to 5.3%. In 2022-23, 7.52 crore people were living in extreme poverty in India. Whereas in 2011-12 this figure was 34.44 crores. This means that 26.9 crore people came out of poverty in 11 years. This is more than the entire population of Pakistan.
Almost half of Pakistan’s population is poor – Report
The situation in Pakistan is exactly the opposite. Between 2017 and 2021, extreme poverty increased from 4.9% to 16.5%. Experts say that if we take the old data of Pakistan, the situation may be even worse. The number of people in Pakistan earning less than $ 4.2 per person per day was 39.8% in 2017, which increased to more than 44.7% in 2021.
Pakistan’s economy is running on the basis of debt money
Pakistan’s economy is completely dependent on debt money. It has taken 25 bailout packages from the IMF, totaling $ 44.57 billion. Apart from this, there is a loan of $ 38.8 billion from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Islamic Development Bank. It has taken a loan of more than $ 25 billion from China and $ 7.8 billion from lenders like Eurobond and Sukuk. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Paris Club have also given several billion dollars of loan to Pakistan.
‘Only Pakistani army is getting rich from bailouts’
According to a report by NDTV, former Pakistan High Commissioner to India Ajay Bisaria told it, “The world cannot solve the problem of Pakistan until the interference of Pakistani army in politics and economy ends. Pakistan’s army divides the resources. Therefore, all the money received from bilateral or multilateral donors is used by the army and it is used to build the terror machinery. All donors should learn a lesson from this data, which shows that only Pakistani army is getting rich from bailouts.” He further said, “The world should impose strict conditions like FATF to monitor the aid given to Pakistan to ensure that the money is used for development and benefit of the people of Pakistan.”
