New Delhi: Pakistan’s once-promising poverty reduction trajectory has come to a “troubling halt” with the poverty rate rising by 7 percentage points between 2021-2022 and 2023-2024 to reach 25.3 percent, the latest World Bank report has said.

According to the report titled ‘Reclaiming Momentum Towards Poverty—Pakistan’s Poverty, and Resilience Assessment ‘ released Tuesday, Pakistan had dramatically reduced poverty from 64.3 percent in 2001 to 21.9 percent in 2018—declining by 3 percentage points annually until 2015, before slowing to less than 1 percentage point per year.

But the impact of Covid-19, devastating floods, high inflation, economic and political instability have left the country vulnerable, and unable to cope with macro challenges, pushing poverty rates back up to a proje

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