Pakistan has made significant improvements in meeting its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including a reduction in poverty, child mortality and stunting, increased food security, health facilities, and daily earnings.
It also had issues related to growth in unemployment and the reduction of the ratio of the completion of primary schools, etc., as revealed in the Pakistan SDGs Status Report 2021 compiled by the Ministry of Planning and Development.
According to the report, the population living below the national poverty line declined by 7.6 percent from 29.5 percent in 2013-14 to 21.9 percent in 2018-19. In this way, 9.3 million people were lifted out of poverty between 2014 and 2019.
There is a noticeable improvement in the indicator for the proportion of the population living in households with access to basic services, including drinking water, access to sanitation, electricity, and clean fuel, the report detailed.
Generally, the government’s spending on education, health, and social protection stagnated at around 24 percent over the last five years between 2014-15 and 2019-20 at the national level. There was a higher increase of eight percent in the total spending on essential services in Sindh only as compared to Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and Balochistan where there was marginal or no increase in the spending on essential services between 2014-15 and 2019-20, as per the report.
It also showed that the unemployment rate increased by one percent to 6.9 percent between 2015 and 2019. The unemployment rate for females was almost double (10 percent) that of their male counterparts (5.9 percent) between 2018 and 2019.
The economy experienced retardation and the annual growth rate of real GDP per capita declined to 3.36 percent in the fiscal year 2019-20 from 2.04 percent in 2014-15, according to the report.
The average hourly earnings at the national level increased from Rs. 76 to Rs. 109 during 2015-19 and urban areas had relatively faster growth in earnings than rural areas in the same period. The average urban hourly earnings increased from Rs. 83 to Rs. 116 and from Rs. 67 to Rs. 97 in the rural areas between 2015 and 2019, the report showed.
Undernourishment in the country fell by 4.2 percent in the four years between 2015 and 2019 under the SDGs indicator. The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in the population based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) increased by 0.46 percent for one year period from 2018-2019 to 2019-2020. According to the latest figures for 2019-2020, 83.56 percent of people in Pakistan are food secure, as illustrated in the report.
Households living in different parts of the country experienced various levels of food insecurity which were as high as 23.36 percent in Balochistan and as low as 14.44 percent in KP in 2019-2020.
Regarding the prevalence of stunted growth as per the SDGs indicator, it reduced to 37.6 percent in 2017-2018 from 44.8 percent in 2012-2013 at the national level. Despite this reduction, the situation remained alarming in some provinces and regions. Nearly half (47 percent) of the children had stunted growth in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and Balochistan as compared to 36.4 percent in Punjab in 2017-2018, the report revealed.
At the national level, a 32.6 percent reduction in the maternal mortality ratio was observed, taking the metric to 186 per 100,000 live births in 2018-2019 from 276 in 2006-2007. The proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel improved by 10 percent and reached 68 percent in 2019-20 from 58 percent in 2014-15. A slight reduction was also recorded in the under-5 mortality rate. The under-5 mortality decreased to 62 in 2019-2020 from 66 in 2014-2015 at the national level with disparities in rural and urban areas, as stated in the report.
Performance in the education-related indicators has been stagnating or marginally improving over the last five years. The completion rate of primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary education is reported and monitored by the SDGs indicator. A distressing situation in the primary completion rate can be seen in the stagnation of 67 percent in the last five years during 2015-2020 at the national level. Similarly, a gender gap of nine percent between the primary completion rate of males and females also persisted in this period, as mentioned in the report.
The large regional disparities persist in primary completion rates across the provinces. The gender gap against net enrolment at the primary, middle, and matric reduced at the national level between 2014-2015 and 2018-2019.
Access to basic services in schools had only marginal improvement at national, provincial, and area government levels, particularly in primary schools. Every four out of ten primary schools lacked electricity at the national level in 2018-2019, and less than two out of ten primary schools in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) schools had electricity in 2018-2019. Also, half of the primary schools in Sindh did not provide safe drinking water to primary schools in 2018-2019, the report revealed.
The population of the country with access to safely managed water sources was 35 percent in 2018-2019, and the proportion of the population using improved water sources was 94 percent in 2019-2020. Among the provinces/regions, the highest proportion of the population using improved drinking water was 99 percent in Punjab, followed by 94 percent in Sindh, 84 percent in Balochistan, and 83 percent in KP according to the report.
Access to electricity is one of the main pillars of the development strategy of the government, particularly rural electrification. An increase of three percent was recorded in 2019-2020, with 96 percent of the population having access to electricity as compared to 93 percent in 2014-2015. Except for Sindh, which had an increase of almost six percent, all the other provinces and regions had decreased access to electricity between 2015-2015 and 2017-2018. Additionally, access to electricity in KP declined to 92 percent in 2018-2019 from 96.2 percent in 2014-2015, as noted in the report.
Another cause for concern was that 30 percent of the youth in the age group 15 to 24 was not in education, employment, or training at the national level over the four-year period of 2015-19. The highest instance of this category was 38 percent in KP. The percentage of children aged 10 to 14 engaged in work slightly reduced by two to 6.47 from 8.64 between 2015 and 2019 at the national level. The highest proportion of children in this category was 6.88 percent in Punjab while the lowest proportion was 0.4 percent in AJK in 2018-2019, as per the report.
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