Claim: Pakistan’s ranking in the Global Food Security Index (GFSI) has improved by three places during the first three years of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) government.
Fact: Pakistan’s ranking in the GFSI has only improved by one place. While the country’s scores for ‘Availability’ and ‘Quality and Safety’ improved between 2016 and 2021, those for ‘Affordability’ and ‘Natural Resources and Resilience’ worsened over the same period.
An image of a bar chart allegedly depicting Pakistan’s food security situation under the current and former governments is doing the rounds on social media, with captions asserting that the country’s ranking has improved in the Global Food Security Index (GFSI), which is maintained by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
According to a CrowdTangle analysis, the image has been shared by multiple users on Facebook, garnering close to 1,500 interactions across just three posts, one of which featured a condemnation of the ruling PTI’s “lies” by lawyer and political activist Mohammad Jibran Nasir.
Most of the captions were in the Urdu language, with the most popular one reading as follows:
“Alhamdulillah, numerous public friendly projects under the leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan [and] with the successful policies of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government, Pakistan is moving in the right direction.
The Economist Global Food Security Index:
In 2016, the three years of the PML-N government versus the first three years of the PTI government, in 2021, Pakistan’s ranking improved by three notches.
Magazines, experts, and leaders from around the world are endorsing Pakistan’s development and people-friendly policies. If the Opposition [parties] remove their glasses [tinted with] biasness, they will know that today, thanks to the PTI, Pakistan is the centre of global attention.
The Muslim League tried to find a solution to every problem through superficial measures, which resulted in loss of resources and the issue remained.
Good governance is not the absence of problems but the timely solution of problems.”
One Facebook user claimed that the graph compared three years of the PTI regime with five years of PML-N rule prior and that the comparison “speaks volumes on the competency of the [government]”. Another user said there was “improvement in the rating of every field”.
Comments were also made on social media about how Pakistan’s score on Food Affordability, which “improved substantially”, was “better compared to India, Bangladesh and Nepal”.
Soch Fact Check investigated the claim that Pakistan’s ranking in the GFSI improved by three places and found it to be false when cross-checked with figures from the ‘GFSI 2021 Model’, which is available to view for free on the Economist Impact website.
Additionally, other claims pertaining to Pakistan’s GFSI scores under the PML-N and PTI governments are misleading.
It is important to note that the standalone GFSI ranking is not a perfect indicator of food security; rather, it is a number calculated using several indexes, such as ‘Affordability’, ‘Availability’, ‘Quality and Safety’, and ‘Natural Resources and Resilience’, all of which are also determined by multiple factors and indicators.
The GFSI also provides relative rankings for countries based on a comparative analysis.
Between 2016 and 2021, Pakistan’s ranking in the GFSI improved by just one place, from 76th to 75th position. Further, there have been improvements to two indices; the ‘Availability’ and ‘Quality and Safety’ rankings rose from 67th to 39th position and 85th to 80th position, respectively.
However, Pakistan’s ‘Affordability’ ranking went down from 72nd position to 79th. Similarly, the ranking for ‘Natural Resources and Resilience’ tanked from 78th position to 95th.
Soch Fact Check formulated a table for the basic scores for Pakistan, as well as three other countries that social media users have mentioned most frequently for the purposes of comparison.
Interestingly, the Economist Impact website itself mentions that the change in average food costs is a challenge that Pakistan needs to overcome.
Pakistan’s food security score, in fact, improved between 2018 and 2019 but worsened between 2019 and 2020, as well as between 2020 and 2021.
Soch Fact Check discovered that four pages linked to the PTI — ‘Insaf Youth Wing Southern Punjab,’ ‘Lubna malik PTI (official),’ ‘IK Information,’ and ‘Kaptan Ka Pakistan’ — shared the same graph in successive posts over a 90-minute period on 16 November. Others that followed included people loyal to the ruling party, an overseas Pakistani, as well as an individual who claims to be the “District Media Secratry [sic] Information Insaf Youth Wing Bahawalpur” and previously managed one of the aforementioned pages.
Soch Fact Check also traced the source of the bar chart to a 16 November tweet.
Conclusion: Pakistan’s GFSI ranking improved by just one place between 2016 and 2021, contrary to posts now circulating on social media. It has, however, worsened over the last two years.