77% Pakistanis Believe Country Headed In Wrong Direction: IPSOS Survey

A new survey by research company IPSOS Pakistan has revealed that 77% Pakistanis believe that the country is generally headed in the wrong direction. This amounts to four out of every five Pakistanis.

More than 1,000 people from all over the country participated in the survey which was conducted between December 1 and December 6, 2020. The findings were released on Tuesday for the last quarter (Q4) of 2020 and compared people’s responses from the same period a year ago.

The survey showed that last year, in the fourth quarter, 21% 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 it is not.

Financial situation

This year, 36% people said that their current personal financial situation is weak, 13% characterised 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 put 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.

Province-wise assessment

When a province-wise assessment was done, it was found that a “poor financial situation” is prominent across all the provinces. Inflation ranked the highest among the top 4 contributors to the situation. In Sindh, the second highest contributor was viewed to be unemployment (20%), followed by COVID-19 (17%) and poverty (16%).

In Punjab, 23% people felt the province’s poor financial situation stems from unemployement, 8% thought 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 plain poverty that was behind the province’s financial situation.