KARACHI: Analysts and economists believe Pakistan is unlikely to meet most of the MDG targets even 10 years after the 2015 deadline primarily due to inadequate economic growth which came in around 3.7 per cent for 2011-12.

Pakistan’s progress on the MDG front has been fairly lackluster as it adopted 19 targets and 41 indicators, but could publish data for 33 indicators in all. Of them, progress is unsatisfactory on 20 indicators, slow on four, off-track in one, on-track in three and ahead of the time in five domains.

“With the current growth rate, there is absolutely no way Pakistan will be able to achieve all the MDGs,” said Ashfaque H. Khan, Principal and Dean at NUST Business School, Islamabad.

“In fact there has been no progress in achieving MDGs since 2008 and the country’s political leadership has been mute on the subject entirely,” he added.

The labour force has increased at a rate of 3.2 per cent, but, according to analysts, a GDP growth rate of seven to eight per cent is required for creating jobs for the new entrants. Therefore, the anaemic growth of 3.7 per cent is not substantial to bring down unemployment and to have the desired trickledown effect.

“Our real per capita income is growing at one per cent, and given the large inequalities in income, it is not possible to achieve the MDGs,” said Sayem Ali, economist at the Standard Chartered Bank.

“International experts have been saying that this growth rate is not sufficient and that Pakistan needs to grow by at least 6 to 7 per cent to just sustain the levels of about two million entrants to the job market each year,” he noted.

According to Khan, there will most likely be a post-2015 development agenda in which some new variables will be added, and some old will be deleted.

Other economists wondered why the current leadership would try to achieve something on a voluntary basis when they are not even able to achieve all the IMF targets, on which foreign aid depended that Pakistan crucially needed.

On the flip side, however, some economists argued that the rural and undocumented components of the economy were moving at a much better pace that has not been incorporated in the official numbers.

There are no concrete numbers available, but there are a few facts that suggest that the GDP could be higher than 3.7 per cent, especially in the rural sector, which gives some hope that some of the MDG targets could still be achieved. The revenue growth in the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) sector has been phenomenal and most companies said that the growth was mainly from rural areas instead of the urban centres. Unilever, for instance, has seen double-digit growth since 2006 and witnessed an increase of 16.1 per cent in revenue since the year before. Nestle has seen exceptional growth of over 20 per cent since 2004 and a rise of 25.9 per cent in sales in 2011 from the year before.

Similarly, sale of motorcycle and three-wheelers increased to 829,893 units in 2011-12, compared with a mere 86,658 in 1999-2000. Likewise, the sale of tractors doubled to 49,745 units from 23,201 units in 1999-2000.

There have also been agriculture bumper crops in the previous few years which have benefited the farmers along with record cement sales which again supports the theory that income in rural areas may be increasing.