Pakistanis pay more than 1.7 billion pounds sterling (2.19 billion dollars) in Zakat per year, the vast majority of beneficiaries being women, according to a study published this week by researchers from the International Center for Tax and Development of Lahore based in the United Kingdom (ICTD) and the Lahore management University.
Zakat is a form of compulsory alms in Islam and one of its five central pillars. It obliges Muslims who respect a certain threshold of wealth to give a fixed part, generally 2.5% of their savings and their assets per year, to those who need them.
The results of the study are based on a survey in 2024 in 7,500 Sunni Pakistani, to give new light on the scale and social role of Zakat, according to an article shared on the ICTD website.
“In a newly published information sheet, we believe that Sunnis self-identified in Pakistan pay more than 619 billion rupees (1.7 billion GBP) in Zakat per year,” the study authors wrote. “In 2024, the average donor of Zakat paid around 15,000 rupees (around 43 GBP) with more than 50 million Pakistanis.”
“Our data suggests that each year, more money is distributed to people in need in Pakistan through Zakat than by the largest state-run cash transfer program, the Benazir income support program,” they added.
The Pakistan income support program (BISP) has a 2024/2025 budget of RS598.7 billion (2.16 billion dollars), while Zakat’s contributions, largely unregulated and directly spent by individuals, exceed this amount.
The duty of federal excise and even the official development aid received by Pakistan in recent years have not been below the annual Zakat total, according to the study.
Research also reveals that the Official Zakat Fund in Pakistan, created in the 1980s for compulsory collection and spent through advice appointed by the State, plays a negligible role.
“Most Pakistanis prefer to get around the state fund, no surprise in a context where individuals have low confidence in the government,” said the authors. “The National State Fund collects only fifty of what we believe to be contributed each year, while the respondents in the survey noted that they prefer to manage their own gifts from Zakat. In our survey, we note that less than 2% of Zakat donors cross the state fund. ”
The study indicated that most zakats are given directly to individuals, or via mosques, schools and, to a lesser extent, NGOs, bypass formal channels.
More than half of the survey respondents said they had given Zakat exclusively to beneficiaries, with a particular preference for widows, which were perceived as particularly economically vulnerable.
The study stresses that private religious gifts fill the critical gaps in well-being in Pakistan, in particular for marginalized groups, in the absence of social protection systems in the robust state.
