The federal government has challenged the World Bank’s assessment of poverty in Pakistan, arguing that the country’s move from South Asia to the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan (MENAAP) grouping has affected regional comparisons.
Khurram Schehzad, adviser to the finance minister, said the change was an administrative and statistical reclassification that altered the composition of regional figures, not Pakistan’s geography or income classification.
In a post on X, Schehzad said regional poverty rates can change simply because countries are added to or removed from a statistical group, even when poverty conditions within individual countries remain unchanged.
He used a hypothetical example to explain that adding a country with a higher poverty rate to a region can push up the region’s overall poverty rate without an immediate change in either country’s underlying conditions.
Schehzad argued that meaningful comparisons should instead use country-level data based on the same poverty threshold and reference year.
The comments came after the World Bank’s October 2026 economic update said Pakistan accounts for nearly half of the people living in extreme poverty across MENAAP.
However, the World Bank did not attribute Pakistan’s rising poverty rate simply to the country’s inclusion in the new regional grouping.
According to the report, Pakistan’s poverty rate increased by 6.4 percentage points at the $3-a-day poverty line and by 3.2 percentage points at the $4.20-a-day line between fiscal years 2018-19 and 2024-25.
The World Bank linked the increase to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 floods, high inflation, currency depreciation and prolonged economic adjustment, which weakened household incomes and employment opportunities.
The report also estimates that Pakistan accounts for around 48 percent of people living below the $3-a-day poverty line across MENAAP.
Pakistan’s inclusion therefore affects the region’s aggregate poverty figures. However, that statistical change does not explain the increase in Pakistan’s own poverty rate, which the World Bank measured using country-level data over time.
