WB lists Ehsaas Programme among world’s four top social protection plans

The World Bank has released a report on Saturday on ‘Global social protection responses to Covid-19’.

This report is called ‘living paper’ and it is a partnership effort involving 18 coauthors and a large number of contributors.

The paper presents a 650-page volume and accompanying database documenting how countries and territories are planning, implementing or completing social protection measures in the context of the pandemic.

“An exponential growth in social protection measures between March 20, 2020 and May 14, 2021 and that a total of 3,333 social protection measures have been planned or implemented in 222 countries or territories,” the report states.

Ehsaas Emergency Cash delivered cash stipends of Rs. 12,000 to 15 million households in 2020.

The cash helped 100 million people or half the country’s population, representing the largest and most extensive social protection intervention ever in the history of the country.

Pakistan ranks 4th globally in terms of the number of people covered and 3rd globally in terms of percentage of population covered amongst those that covered over 100 million people.

According to the report, Pakistan’s Ehsaas also ranked high amongst the programs that did well in terms of Planned versus actual coverage rates.

Among social assistance measures, cash transfers remain the premier instrument.

Nearly 734 cash-based measures have been planned or implemented in 186 countries. However, highest level of spending in lower middle-income countries category is observed in Mongolia Zimbabwe, Bolivia, and Pakistan.

The system was end-to-end data-driven, fully automated, rule-based, transparent, and politically neutral and payments were biometrically verified.