On Friday, 8 August 2025, Mr Ahsan Rana delivered an enlightening lecture on “Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation” to participants of the 38^th Senior Management Course at the National Institute of Public Administration, Labore.

Mr. Ahsan began by framing social protection as “the set of policies and programmes designed to reduce and prevent poverty, vulnerability and social exclusion across the life-cycle,” stressing its centrality to any poverty-reduction strategy. He underscored its redistributive purpose but noted a paradox: while the bottom four income quintiles shoulder 56.7% of government revenues, the top quintile captures the bulk of programme benefits, reflecting a pronounced equity gap.

Mr. Ahsan noted that Pakistan’s tax mix still leans un regressive indirect levies that hit the poor hardest, even as the population could double to 514 million within three decades; yet federal-provincial spending on education, health, population control and skills (PKR 3.38 trn) still trails the defence budget, limiting human-capital gains. While he welcomed the Benazir Income Support Programme’s expanded PKR 722 bn outlay for FY 2026, he warmed of payment delays, agent skimming and transfer values that should rise from 12% to at least half the minimum wage, and he called soaring, unfunded pension liabilities, now larger than the federal development budget, a looming fiscal time-bomb in urgent need of reform.

Concluding, Mr. Ahsan urged an integrated social-protection architecture that prioritises the bottom two quintiles, shifts financing toward progressive direct taxes and social insurance, and tightens governance to curb leakages. The session remained interactive.