The government has requested the World Bank for a loan of $600 million toroll out an innovative hybrid social protection scheme to support itsaspirations around risk mitigation and financial inclusion among the poorand informal workers.
The scheme will blend social assistance with social risk mitigationelements to help reduce the vulnerability of the missing middle to shocksunder the ‘Pakistan Crisis-Resilient Social Protection’ programme,according to a new World Bank document released on Saturday.
According to the report compiled by a local media outlet, the basic modelwill be a contributory savings scheme with matching incentives, with ashort-to-medium term horizon for withdrawals. It will build on lessons fromsimilar programmes in other countries. Individuals would not be penalisedfor early withdrawal of their own savings but will not have access tocontributions before reaching the minimum time commitment.
This would allow funds to accumulate for later release either on anemergency basis during a crisis or at other significant life events likeageing, illness or death, after this period.
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During the first phase, the hybrid scheme will be open to a subset ofcurrent and existing beneficiaries of the Benazir Income Support Programme(BISP), although if successful the scheme could be gradually extended to amuch wider population.
The World Bank document says that the programme will support theenhancement of the social protection delivery systems, including the socialregistry and biometric payments system, to increase the ability of thesocial protection system overall to adapt to the needs of the targetpopulation during both crisis and normal times.
