This was one of the important findings of a one-day seminar on 'Experiences with Poverty Targeting: Lessons for Pakistan', jointly organised by ADB's Pakistan's Resident Mission (PRM) in association with the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) and the Government of Pakistan.
The disappointing experience resulted from errors of targeting, hijacking of the benefits by the elite and poor governance in implementation of diverting the benefits to the non-poor.
Participants of the event included various federal and provincial governments' officials, academics and other stakeholders with Dr Ashfaque Khan, Economic Advisor and Director General Debt office, in the chair.
In his opening comments, Dr Naved Hamid, Senior Economic Advisor, ADB Pakistan Resident Mission, pointed out that this is a pertinent time to discuss poverty targeting programmes in Pakistan as such programmes constitute an important part of the government's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP).
Thus, it is relevant to discuss the experiences in other Asian countries so that Pakistan may avoid some of the potential pitfalls related to such policies, he said.
Furthermore, Naved Hamid maintained, Pakistan is currently experiencing high GDP growth rates and it is important to consider the use of poverty targeting programmes as a means of ensuring that even the poorest groups in society benefit from such economic growth.
Dr John Weiss, Research Director, ADBI Tokyo, discussed the main conclusions and lessons that could be learned from research into poverty targeting policies of Asian countries.
Chief Economist, National Council for Applied Economic Research, Delhi, Dr Pradeep Srivastava went into more details by focusing on India's experience with poverty targeting.
Dr G.M. Arif from the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) discussed Pakistan's poverty targeting programmes. This was followed by an open and fruitful discussion with contributions from both government and civil society representatives.
Dr Ashfaque Khan, while concluding the seminar, drew together the main points and called for further studies on the experience in Pakistan. Particularly, Dr Khan argued that Pakistan's current poverty targeted programmes, such as Microfinance, Zakat and Bait ul Maal would benefit from third party evaluation in order to assess their efficacy.