RAWALPINDI, Nov 15: Though Punjab has made significant progress in improving the quality of key social services and access to them over the last five years, the social indicators of the province still fall short of its economic development.

A progress report prepared by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on the Punjab Devolved Social Services Programme said the declining social indicators were reflected by low literacy rates, high infant, child and maternal mortality rates, high susceptibility to communicable diseases, a very low proportion of deliveries being made by trained birth attendants, high disparity among income and gender groups in access to social services, and inadequate conditions of sanitation and solid waste management.

Citing an example, the report pointed out that the literacy rate for children 10 years of age and above was 56 per cent in Punjab, only marginally higher than the 54 per cent in Pakistan. While the net enrolment ratio at 57 per cent is higher than the 52 per cent national average, but is still low in absolute terms compared to that of other countries.

The provincial government is committed to transforming the province into a modern and affluent society and its development paradigm is encapsulated in its Vision 2020, which projects the province as a fully literate, employed, highly educated, skilled, talented, tolerant, culturally sophisticated, internationally connected and reasonably well-off healthy society by 2020.

However, the realisation of this vision will not be possible without rapid human development. Furthermore, Punjab is also undergoing structural transformation.

The importance of the agriculture sector has declined significantly from 31 per cent of the GDP in fiscal year 1999 to 21 per cent in 2006, while the importance of the manufacturing and services sectors has increased.

Still, almost half of Punjab’s labour force is employed by the agriculture sector. The strong growth of the manufacturing and services sectors is a key requirement for generating productive employment opportunities. This transformation also calls for increased human development, said the ADB report.

The government has initiated the Punjab Health Sector Reforms Programme. Supported by the World Bank, it has also implemented the Punjab Education Sector Reform Programme since 2003 to improve access to, the quality of and governance in education.

About the significant progress made by the province, the report noted that school enrolment, especially at the primary level and, most importantly the enrolment of girls has increased. The net enrolment rate at the primary level now stands at 57 per cent, compared to 44 per cent in 1999. The gender parity index for tertiary education has improved from 0.78 in 2002 to 0.93 in 2007. The literacy rate in the province has increased from 47 per cent in 2002 to 62 per cent in 2007.

Health sector indicators have also shown improvement. The infant mortality rate of 82 per 1,000 in 2002 has been reduced to 72 per 1,000 in 2007. The maternal mortality rate of 350 per 100,000 births in 2002 has gone down to 257 per 100,000 births by 2007.

Furthermore, immunisation coverage rose from 57 per cent in 2001-02 to 76 per cent in 2007. Access to piped water has increased from 6 per cent of the rural population in 2002 to 19 per cent in 2007. Similarly, in 2002, 31 per cent of the rural population had access to flush toilets; in 2007 this figure went up to 50 per cent.

Despite the relatively sanguine performance of the economy, the province shares many challenges facing the country as a whole, including sustaining economic growth, reducing poverty, improving the investment climate, increasing export competitiveness and accelerating social development. Furthermore, with the labour force growing at the rate of about 3 per cent per annum, the creation of productive employment opportunities is a major task.

As reflected in the national trends, the report said, the economy of Punjab has also staged a major upturn from a contraction of 0.9 per cent in fiscal year 2001 to strong growth of 7.1 per cent in 2006, despite the poor performance of the agriculture and crop sectors. On the back of strong economic growth, the per capita income in the province almost doubled in the past five years to around 1,000 dollars in 2007, while the poverty head count ratio has declined by about 11 per cent since 2002. Through improved fiscal management, the government has been successful in creating fiscal space.

As a result of strong growth and increased fiscal space, development expenditures have increased substantially over the period 2003-07 from 0.9 per cent of gross provincial product to 2.2 per cent, in relation to recurrent expenditures, which dropped from 4.5 per cent to 4.0 per cent over the same period.

The total amount allocated for education, health and water supply and sanitation increased from Rs43.6 billion in 2002-03 to Rs132.4 billion in 2006-07.