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Govt aims at reducing poverty to below 5pc
The government has envisaged an ambitious plan to reduce poverty to less than 5 percent by 2030 from existing 24.8 percent.The government has envisaged an ambitious plan to reduce poverty to less than 5 percent by 2030 from existing 24.8 percent.
Unveiling the 15-year Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on Thursday, the National Planning Commission (NPC) said it has come up with long-term governance and rights-based visions to achieve the targets.
The long-term plan has 17 targets, including ending all types of poverty, food security and
sustainable agriculture development, quality education to all, gender equality, and women empowerment.
Among other priority areas are enhancing access to energy supply, change in consumption and production modality, fighting climate change and setting up effective, inclusive and accountable institutions for incorporating all in social upliftment.
The NPC said it has developed indicators based on the country’s needs rather than adopting global indices.
Speaking at a programme, NPC Vice-chairman Yuba Raj Khatiwada said many countries have set targets to reduce poverty to zero, but it is unattainable in Nepal’s context.
The previous Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) enforced in 2000 had set targets at low levels, and as a result, maximum targets had been met, according to Khatiwada. “However, the new targets are ambitious and will require timely implementation,” he said. “The government will immediately start assessing financial resources that can be raised at the domestic-level. We will also hold dialogues with potential foreign donors in global forums to meet the resource gap.”
Khatiwada said the budget for the next fiscal year will allocate the necessary resources. “All the government programmes, including the upcoming three-year plan, will be formulated in line with the SDGs,” he said, adding although the country has witnessed a remarkable change in the people’s living standards, qualitative growth is still a far cry.
The SGDs will focus on generating employment opportunities, justifiable distribution of social security schemes, education system up to secondary level, agricultural productivity and health services in particular.
The SGDs have considered infrastructure development as a fundamental factor for sustainable development and have targeted increasing hydropower generation capacity to 10,000MW by 2030 from 818MW in 2014. They have also envisaged increasing the industry’s share in the GDP to 25 percent from 15 percent in 2014.
Stating the maternal mortality rate was reduced to almost half to 415 per 100,000 live births during the MDG period, Khatiwada said ensuring proper health service to all the women is yet to be done.
He said the focus on enhancing the living conditions of the average people undermined the deprived groups. “The new SDGs will implement development programmes in disaggregated form so that even the deprived people have access to the development fruits,” he said.
The NPC said it has been assessing the total budget required to fund the SDGs in association with the United Nations Development Programme. “We have started a study on sources that can be generated domestically. We will approach potential foreign donors within 3-4 months,” Khatiwada said.