PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government in collaboration with the Planning Commission and United Nations Development Programme has launched an awareness campaign on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and findings of a study `Multidimensional Poverty Index` (MPI).

In this regard a workshop was arranged here on Tuesday, which was attended by government officials, lawmakers and development professionals.

Zafar Ali Shah, provincial secretary Planning and Development Department, said on the occasion that the federal and provincial governments and other stakeholders had been making efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, adding that progress had been made on some of them.

He said that MDGs mostly focused on the developing countries, while SDGs covered both the developed and developing countries. He said that the government would make SDGs part of the shortand long-term development goals.

He said that the KP government was working on multiple indictor cluster survey, while it was also compiling GDP data of the province for the first time that would be published within three to four months.

Zafar Hassan, chief of poverty section at the Planning Commission, made a presentation on MPI and said that that income-based poverty had fallen sharply in Pakistan with the percentage living below the national poverty line decreasing from 64 per cent in 2001-02 to 30 per cent in 2013-14.

However, similar progress has not been evident across social indicators such as access to education and health facilities. Although Pakistan`s economic indicators are comparable to lower middle-income economies, the social indicators are comparable to those of least developed countries.

The Planning Commission of Pakistan has adopted MPI as a second of ficial measure to complement the existing incomebased measures.

Mr Hassan claimed that poverty had been decreasing in KP. However, he said that nearly half of the population in the province still experienced multidimensional poverty.

KP ranks second after Balochistan with the highest proportion of multidimensional poor population. On a positive note, its pace of decreasing poverty is second to Punjab.

Arif Yousaf, who is convener of the parliamentary task force on SDGs, said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa`s performance on MDGs was not satisfactory.