Pak meets UN poverty goal ahead of schedule

Bangkok, Oct 16: Pakistan has achieved the global poverty reduction target years ahead of schedule with India on track to meet the 2015 deadline but this has not translated into improved child health, says a UN-ADB (Asian Development Bank) assessment released here today.

Pakistan is an ''early achiever'' along with China, Indonesia and Thailand in having reduced by half, the number of people living on less than one US dollar a day which is the first of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by world leaders at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000.

Between 1995 and 2005, the proportion of Pakistanis living below the one US dollar-a-day poverty benchmark fell from 47.8 to 17 per cent of the national population, according to the latest survey of Asian regional progress towards the MDGs.

The joint assessment by the Bangkok-based UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the ADB, shows 36 per cent of India's population subsisting on less than one US dollar-a-day in 2005.

There was a 6.3 per cent decline in the proportion of people living on less than one US dollar-a-day in India since 1995.

However, as UN experts point out, this is not surprising given the huge size of the Indian population so that a one per cent poverty reduction requires a massive cutback in the actual number of poor people.

The survey notes that most Asian countries are on track to achieve the MDGs, which measure human development in terms of income, nutrition, education, health care and gender disparity levels among other things.

But it expresses concern over prevailing high levels of child and maternal mortality, especially in South Asia.

''Progress on halving poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, and eliminating gender disparity at all levels of education is faster than required to meet the targets,'' says the Millennium Development Goals: Progress in Asia and the Pacific 2006 report.

''The region's performance with regard to three targets is cause for concern. First, although child morality overall is falling fast enough, progress on infant mortality is slow. Second, HIV prevalence in the region continues to rise. Third, access to basic sanitation in urban areas is improving only slowly, while the regional proportion of urban dwellers with access to safe water is actually declining,'' the report adds.

India has one of the highest levels of poverty and underweight children in the region. The under-five mortality rate per 1,000 live births in India declined from 123 in 1995 to 85 a decade later.

In Pakistan this fell from 130 to 101 during the same period which also saw under-five mortality rate declining from 145 to 76 in Nepal, 149 to 77 in Bangladesh, 166 to 80 in Bhutan and 32 to 14 in Sri Lanka.

According to the report, India and Pakistan are ''regressing'' on progress towards health-related MDGs and both nations are faulted for relatively inadequate public investment in basic health care.

India's public health expenditure was only 1.1 per cent of GDP in 2003 while in Pakistan this stood at just 0.7 per cent of the gross national income that year.

Pakistan is also criticised for not spending enough on basic education despite having the lowest primary enrolment rate in Asia.

Public expenditure on education in Pakistan declined from 2.6 per cent in 1999 to 2 per cent in 2004, ''one of the lowest in the region''.

In contrast, the best educational performers in the region - Palau, Tonga, Malaysia and Fiji allocated more than six per cent of their GDP for education.

UNI