Mr. Chairman, 1. On behalf of the Pakistan delegation, I would like to congratulate you and other members of the bureau for their election to the current session of the Commission on Population and Development. We would like to thank the Secretariat for the excellent reports prepared for this session. My comments will primarily focus on agenda item 4 regarding national experience in population matters. Pakistan with a population of around 137 million is the seventh most populous country in the world.
Historical trends indicate a continuously increasing growth in population.
The population of the area now constituting Pakistan was 16.6 million in 1901. Since then the population has increased more than eight-fold. The current population growth rate is estimated at about 2.3 percent. The population welfare programme in Pakistan is one of the oldest in Asia but it could not achieve the same success as programmes in other countries of the region have achieved. Several factors were the cause of little progress in reducing the growth rate.