Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal has presented the Pakistan’s Voluntary National Review (VNR) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the United Nations’ High Level Political Forum (HLPG) 2022.
While presenting the VNR during the 15th meeting of ministerial segment of Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC 2022) at the United Nations in New York, the minister said Pakistan was a resilient nation. “We are a nation of young people. 64 percent of population are below the age of 30. Youth of Pakistan need good and quality education, and skills to achieve sustainable development for a better Pakistan.”
He said despite having formidable global and national challenges, Pakistan followed its development plans in partnership with the international community and local stakeholders, according to a message received here on Saturday.
“This year’s VNR report contains localisation efforts and innovation in partnership with other different stakeholders, response and recovery from Covid and way forward in the light of lessons learnt to build forward better in the decade of action.”
Ahsan Iqbal presented the Vision 2025 alignment with the Social Development Goals. He said the SDGs were strategically aligned with the National Vision 2025. “Each pillar is uniquely associated with different Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”
On the policy enabling environment, he said the SDGs were adopted as a national development agenda through a unanimous National Assembly resolution in 2016.
“Soon after, we have established specialised seven SDGs support units at the federal, provincial and special areas to mainstream and localise SDGs.”
On the transformation from the last VNR, the minister said in the last three years Pakistan had its first SDGs Status Report 2021.
“Development projects are SDGs integrated, data quality is improving and we are harmonising the data and survey instruments are being standardised,” he said, adding the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) had a latest National Socio Economic Registry that geo-tagged all out of school children.
“Pakistan SDGs Index is developed to monitor the progress at goal level and overall; it shows 10 percentage points improve from 2015-2020.”
He said cellular mobile subscribers had reached 182 million; an increase of 8.6 percent in nine months of FY2021.
Similarly, Broadband (BB) subscribers reached 100 million – 28 percentage points increase in one year.
He also informed the panel that a centre was formed that served as a central agency to manage Covid-19.—APP
