ISLAMABAD: Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal on Wednesday called upon the parliament to develop a roadmap with broad national consensus to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
He said the development goals were part of every political party’s manifesto, therefore the parliamentarians could play role in achieving the SDGs by ensuring legislation and resources required for the purpose.
Addressing a national meeting on Sustainable Development Goals 2022, Ahsan Iqbal said the parliamentarians could make the legal framework with respect to the development goals more effective.
Further he said all stakeholders including civil society and local governments should also be taken on board so that the whole state infrastructure could play role in achieving the SDGs.
The minister said that the progress of the SDGs was impacted by the current economic crisis in Pakistan, however the incumbent government was committed to set the economy in right direction which would ultimately help achieving the goals by the given time.
He said the development budget was directly related to SDGs, but the big challenge was that the federal development budget was shrinking instead of expanding.
“In 2018, when we left the government, the allocation for the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) was Rs1000 billion, but it shrank to Rs550 billion in 2022,” he said adding that due to fiscal constraints, the government could managed to allocate Rs700 billion for the current fiscal year.
The minister said policy continuity was also important in this regard, but unfortunately there had been policy disruption in the past.
He said in 2015, the world had adopted the SDGs to remove poverty, hunger, and backwardness from across the world, but Pakistan was the first country which adopted these goals as part of national development agenda in 2014.
