RAWALPINDI, Oct 16: The ‘International Day for the Eradication of Poverty,’ being observed on Wednesday, provides an opportunity to take stock of progress and re-energise efforts towards archiving Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The theme for this year is ‘people living in poverty as agents of change.’

Poverty is still a serious concern in Pakistan as a new report on progress in terms of achieving the MDG goals by 2015, released this week reveals that it is off-track, having a high rate of underweight children.

A large percentage of the population classified as transitory poor. Nearly 40.5 percent can be classified as vulnerable and poor and only 12 per cent are extremely poor, says the ‘Pakistan in the 21st Century: Vision 2030.’

Despite an increase in per capita income, poverty has increased in the 1990s, resulting from worsening income distribution.

The income share of the lowest 20 per cent population in urban areas is lower than their rural counterparts, where informal safety nets are also weaker.

The new report, jointly prepared by UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Ecap) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), says other indicators for poverty relate to hunger and nutrition. Compared with the success in income poverty, the situation in the region is almost the reverse.

This is one of the region’s greatest failures —28 per cent of out under-five children are underweight taking the country off- target.

Asia and the Pacific accounts for around 65 per cent of the world’s underweight children. This high level is likely to be linked to the poor health and nutrition of women, as well as to unsafe water supplies and infectious diseases, such as diarrhoea, combined with inadequate care, says the report.

The ‘Vision 2030’ policy document of the government envisages that extreme poverty will have been eliminated in Pakistan in all its forms much before 2030, whether it relates to lack of productive resources to generate material wealth, access to food, health, and education, prevalence of diseases, or natural calamities such as floods or drought, or man-made calamities such as wars.

Yet, a large segment of the population lives in poverty. According to the rebated GDP numbers, the per capita income comes to 720 dollars. Poverty rates, which had fallen substantially in the 1980s and early 1990s, started to rise again toward the end of the decade.

More importantly, differences in income per capita across regions have persisted or widened. Poverty varies significantly among rural and urban areas and from province to province, from a low of 14 per cent in urban Singh to 41 per cent in rural NWFP.

The federal government, under a new initiative is developing the ‘Social Protection Strategy’ to protect poor and vulnerable households from having an adverse impact on their consumption; to support poor households in managing these shocks; and to build resilience against chronic poverty and interrupting inter- generational cycle of poverty by promoting investments in human and physical assets by poor households.

The long-term objective of social protection strategy is to develop an integrated and comprehensive social protection system, especially the vulnerable poor and non-poor. The focus is on providing cash transfers to the poorest of the poor and vulnerable, who are about 20 per cent of the population.

The number of beneficiaries is expected to increase from about 2 million, at present, to 3.2 million in the next five years. In addition, new pilot programmes, such as child support and public works programme, will be initiated.

The Asia-Pacific region has 61 per cent of the world’s population but in some cases its share is higher. One of the most widespread problems is sanitation; Asia and the Pacific accounts for 75 per cent of the world’s rural and 63 per cent urban population who do not have access to basic sanitation —1.9 billion in total.

The region also has high shares of people suffering from TB and underweight children. In addition, despite the region’s success in reducing poverty there are still 641 million people living on less than one dollar per day.

It has been estimated that persistent gender inequality is costing the region 58 billion to 77 billion dollars per year.

The report says that if the countries that are currently off- track — are either slow or regressing — were to alter their course they would be able to meet the targets.