Development Economics

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Contents

Status of Pakistan in Achieving the MDGs        

Status of Countries in Similar Income Groups        

Low Income Countries        

Lower Middle Income Countries        

Middle Income Countries        

Upper Middle Income Countries        

High Income Countries        

Status of Indonesia in Achieving the MDGs        

References        

Status of Pakistan in Achieving the MDGs

The Millennium Development goals are the eight international development goals that have been initiated by the UN and its member states in 2000 with a target of achieving them by 2015. This has been a tremendously healthy attempt taken by the developed economies to lift the struggling economies to a much equal level socially and economically. These 8 goals have been further sub divided into 60 indicators to which Pakistan has agreed sadly to 41 indicators only. Improve maternal health

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It has been recently reported that Pakistan aims to achieve only 9 of the indicators and thus it is highly expected that the nation will definitely lose track of the 30 indicators. Since Pakistan itself had had a very controversial government over the past years coupled with administrative and political weaknesses it meant that the implementation of the MDGs at the provincial level was bound to fail.

Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger

Under MDG1 Pakistan aims to reduce the proportion of the people living below the poverty line, achieve full and productive employment to a half by 2015. There has been a consistent decline in the poverty status of the nation which is regularly measured on the basis of calorie and consumption.

According to consistent official methodology and Pakistan Living Standards Measurement Survey data, it appears that poverty headcount has declined from 34.5 percent of the total population in 2001-02 to 12.4 percent in 2010-11. However, this figure is not confirmed and a technical group on poverty has been setup by the Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms to review official methodology for poverty estimation and validate poverty numbers. If this is true and the poverty headcount (at $1.25 a day) has decreased to 12.4%, then the target of 13% has been achieved.

One of the indicators, which is the population below minimum level of dietary energy consumption stood at 58% in 2010-11, which is predicted to worsen because of a two digit inflation rate and an even higher food inflation because it would lead in decreased purchasing power of the poor.

However when it comes to the unemployment to population ratio it as increased from 27.1% (2001-2) to 30.9% (2010-11) and thus makes it much unlikely to meet the target of full employment by 2015. Malnutrition that is measured by under-weight children less than 5 years of age stands at 31.5% (2010-11) which far more than 20% - the target originally set for 2015.

Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education

According to an article published in Business Recorder in March 2013 a report of the special committee of the National Assembly was presented regarding the MDGs. The committee found out that the national literacy rate stands at 58 percent which is far below the MDG target of 88 percent. With the current state of progress, it seems that Pakistan will not be able to achieve this goal till 2015. But talking about indicators, according to the world bank statistics, the literacy rate of females have increased from 53% in 2005 to 63% in 2011. But, according to the report presented by the committee, women literacy rate has fallen from 64.3% to 54.3% from 2012-13.