Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif chairs a meeting on people’s welfare in Islamabad on Tuesday. Photo: X/BPM
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday stressed that maintaining a balance between population growth and available resources was essential for sustainable development, saying rapid population growth was putting increasing pressure on national resources and posing a major challenge to the country’s progress.
Chairing a high-level meeting on people’s welfare, the Prime Minister said population planning must be aligned with national development, economic stability and improved human resources, according to a press release from the Media Office of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
He asked the authorities to convene the inaugural meeting of the National Population Council as soon as possible and requested that its organizational structure be finalized without delay to facilitate the development of effective policies on population-related issues.
The meeting was attended by Chief of Defense Force and Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, Minister of State for Finance and Railways Bilal Azhar Kayani and senior government officials.
The Prime Minister announced that he would personally chair the National Population Council, which would include the chief ministers of the four provinces, the Prime Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, the Chief Minister of Gilgit-Baltistan and other key stakeholders.
During the meeting, participants were briefed on the country’s population growth and measures to control and protect the population.
Meeting members highlighted plans to link social protection programs with family planning initiatives, while emphasizing that women’s education and economic empowerment would be a key pillar of the national population strategy.
The meeting participants were also informed that a national public awareness campaign would be launched to promote balanced population growth and family planning.
Participants were further informed that effective population management programs were currently being implemented in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Iran.
According to the Prime Minister’s Office, the National Population Council, in collaboration with provincial governments, would help implement an effective national campaign for the welfare of the people.
Read also: Ahsan calls population growth unsustainable
He was further informed that the Council Secretariat would be established within the Ministry of Planning.
Pakistan’s population, which stood at 31 million at the time of independence in 1947, has increased to 241 million, according to the 2023 census. However, last year, new figures released by the US Census Bureau estimated that the population had surpassed 257 million, cementing Pakistan’s status among the world’s most populous nations despite a decline in the fertility rate.
According to the United Nations World Fertility Report 2024Pakistan’s fertility rate has fallen from six live births per woman in 1994 to 3.6 in 2024. Despite this decline, the country is expected to become the third most populous country in the world by 2050, surpassing the United States, Indonesia, Brazil and Russia, with a population expected to exceed 380 million.
Projections are supported by the official Demographic projections 2023-2050 report, prepared in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which estimates that Pakistan’s population will increase by 59 percent to more than 383 million people by 2050.
On Monday, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal also warned that uncontrolled population growth was Pakistan’s most critical structural challenge and called for urgent reforms at the national level to address the problem.
“No country in history has made sustained progress with such a high population growth rate,” he said, adding that successful countries have reduced their growth rate to around 1 to 1.5 percent or less. He said rapid population growth was diluting economic gains.
“If the economy grows by 3 percent while the population grows by 2.5 percent, the real progress is only half a percent,” he said, describing this as a major obstacle to national prosperity.
