The National Poverty Graduation Programme (NPGP) is a four and half year US$ 150 million initiative supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Government of Pakistan, with the Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety as the lead implementing agency. The programme is designed to graduate households out of poverty, building largely (but not exclusively)
upon BISP beneficiaries and leveraging the Prime Minister’s Interest-Free Loan (IFL) scheme to build a smooth ‘seamless service’ where the poorest can move out of poverty through a blended programme extending from consumption support to asset transfers to interest free loans to microcredit. The poverty graduation approach in the NPGP combines elements of three distinct approaches - social protection, livelihoods development, and financial inclusion - and draws on the most relevant aspects of these to deliver results by combining support for immediate needs with longer-term human capital and asset investments to move households out of extreme poverty and into sustainable livelihoods. The overall goal of the programme is to assist the ultra-poor and very poor in graduating out of poverty on a sustainable basis; simultaneously improving their overall food security, nutritional status and resilience to climate change. The programme will cover 21 districts in 4 provinces - Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan.
