Pakistan has drastically reduced its population growth rate from 3.1 percent to 1.96 percent which means that country's population is growing at the rate of approximately three million each year, said Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz.
He was giving a keynote address at the inaugural session of seminar on "emerging population challenges-policy and management responses" held here on Saturday.
An increase of such magnitude has serious economic and social implications for the country.
There is, therefore, no room to relax and become complacent. The challenge continues and so should the response.
The population welfare programme provides us with an opportunity to face up to this challenge with determination and a sustained commitment to bridge the wide gap between increasing human needs and scarce economic resources, he added.
This could be the reason behind the failure of narrow social policies of the past.
We entered the new millennium with a huge backlog of development deficit of rural-urban disparity, low literacy, insufficient health services, high poverty levels, a decline in GDP growth and per capita income and high unemployment.
These were further compounded by a huge external debt and its debt servicing liabilities.
Contraceptive prevalence rate has risen from 11 percent in 1990 to 34 percent. The total fertility rate has decreased from 6.8 births per woman in 1980, to 4.1 births per woman today.
All this indicates that a downward trend in fertility transition has been triggered. For long-term success, it needs to be sustained.
He said that the government's commitment to the population-planning programme is evident in progressive increases in its allocation. The budgets increased from Rs 9.1 billion during 1993-1998 to Rs 15.6 billion during 1998-2003 and near to Rs 20.6 billion during the current 2003-2008.
This marks a 126 percent increase over this period, which will be sustained till we stabilise our population growth by 2020. The public sector development programme allocation for 2002-2003 was Rs 2.2 billion and it was enhanced to Rs 3.1 billion for the current year.
In "The National Plan of Action on Education for All" the government aims at achieving universal education for boys by 2010 and for girls by 2015. Government's education policy focuses on significant improvements in female literacy, whereas a Tawana Pakistan project aims at providing incentives for education to girls, and simultaneously tackling malnourishment. The programme provides food supplements and free daily meals in 29 districts of the country.
A national health policy 2001, "Health for All", has been framed to meet the challenges of the health sector by addressing ten critical areas for sustained health in the country.
The policy aims to reduce mortality, morbidity and malnutrition especially among infants and mothers. It also envisions improved access to health services resulting in better health of the population.
A national policy for development and empowerment of women was launched in March 2002. Through the policy, a number of initiatives have been taken to reduce the gender-gap, and increase female representation in national and provincial assemblies.
Women seats in local bodies have been increased to 33 percent, resulting in the election of 4,000 women through local body elections. Similarly, a five percent quota for women has been fixed in employment, and a number of crises centers for women in distress have been established.
A long term "Interim Population Sector Perspective Plan - 2012", along with an explicit population policy of Pakistan, provides a clear vision and road map to achieve population stabilisation through the expeditious completion of the demographic transition, he maintained.
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