Floods push 9m people into poverty

ISLAMABAD: The World Bank has drastically lowered its estimate of the impact of floods on poverty and released a new figure, saying that up to nine million more people may have slipped into poverty due to the climatic consequences, which has taken the poverty level to over 40% of the population.
In its Pakistan Development Update, the World Bank cautioned that vulnerable people would take years to recover from the impact of the devastating floods and high inflation. Despite a reduction in the poverty estimate, still 40% of the population, or 89 million, will be living in poor conditions.
“Preliminary estimates suggest that as a direct consequence of the floods, the national poverty rate can increase further by 2.5 to 4 percentage points, pushing between 5.8 million and 9 million people into poverty,” said the World Bank report that was launched on Thursday. Earlier, the bank had told the government that the national poverty rate could further increase in the range of 4.5% to 7%, which would envelop another 9.9 million and 15.4 million people. The fresh number is lower by 4.1 million to 6.4 million. It is a quickly evolving situation and in light of the latest information, the World Bank has revised downward the poverty estimate, said the bank’s economist Moritz Meyer. Meyer said that the inflationary pressures were likely to continue in the context of recent floods, which were expected to disrupt the supply of critical household and agricultural goods, disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable people.-PNP