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ISLAMABAD: A new survey has revealed that 77% of Pakistanis think that the country is headed in the wrong direction.
This amounts to four out of every five citizens. This is according to a survey by research company IPSOS Pakistan in which more than 1,000 people participated all over the country and was held between 1-6th December 2020.
The findings were released for the last quarter of the ongoing year and compared responses from the same period a year ago. The survey showed that last year, in the fourth quarter, 21% of people believed that the country was headed in the right direction, while 79% thought the opposite.
This year has seen a very small improvement, with 23% saying they believe Pakistan is on the right track and 77% thinking otherwise. This year, 36% of people said that their current personal financial situation is weak, 13% declared it as strong while 51% said it is neither strong nor weak.
By comparison, last year, 38% had said their financial situation is weak, 5% had termed it strong and 57% had placed it in between. This indicates a slight improvement in personal finances with a 2% drop in the weak category and an 8% rise in the strong category.
A province-wise assessment found that a ‘poor financial situation’ is prominent across all the provinces. Inflation was ranked the highest among the top four contributors to the adverse situation.
In Sindh, the second-highest contributor was unemployment (20%), followed by COVID-19 (17%) and poverty (16%). In Punjab, 23% of people felt the poor financial situation was due to unemployment, 8% said it was due to COVID-19 and 14% believed poverty has a role.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 18% felt unemployment is the leading cause, 12% attributed it to COVID-19 and 8% felt it was poverty that was behind the province’s financial situation.
In Balochistan, 25% of people responded by blaming unemployment, and 25% felt it was poverty while only two percent said COVID-19 played a role in the province’s financial affairs.
