State Minister for Production and Industries Tasneem Ahmed Qureshi has said that the coalition government allocated huge funds for the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) in the recent budget 2023-2024 which showed its sincerity to end poverty in the country. Talking to APP on Thursday, he said Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) had played crucial role for increasing the BISP allocations. He said the PPP had a vision for development of the poor since its formation by former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
He said the BISP Board, under the supervision of Federal Minister Shazia Marri, approved the huge amount for financial year 2023-2024. Out of total allocation, Rs 361.5 million would be spent on 9.3 million families under the Benazir Kifalat Programme, whereas 1.5 million beneficiaries would get Rs 32.27 billion under the BISP growth programme.
Tasneem Qureshi said that Rs 55.4 billion had been allocated for Benazir Taleemi Wazaif, through which 9.2 million children would get the BISP stipends. He said Rs 6 billion would be spent on 50,000 students under the Benazir Undergraduate Scholarships Programme. He said the number of registered BISP beneficiaries had increased from 7.6 million to 9 million and the amount had also been increased from Rs 7,000 to Rs 8,750 per beneficiary. He said steps were under way for transparent transactions to the BISP beneficiaries and the government was going to introduce some other ways instead of engaging private bank agents, etc.
