Government officials on Friday ruled out any dispute with the United Nations Population Fund over the preliminary figure of the fifth population census carried out in March 15 to 19 this year.
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics secretary Riti Ibrahim told New Age that UNFPA representatives were with them during the entire process of the census and they would also be present at the launching ceremony of the preliminary report of the population and household census today.
Planning minister AK Khandker will release the report at the National Economic Council auditorium at 11:00am.
The government is going to launch the preliminary report of the census, which has been widely criticised for being hurried and not sufficiently thorough, about one month behind the schedule amid a raging debate over the accurate size of the country’s population.
Riti Ibrahim said the UNFPA in 2011 revised the population figure from the projected 16.44 crore to 14.80 crore and claimed that at the moment there was no difference between the UN body and the government over the population figure of the country.
The UNFPA revised the figure after the government had sent a rejoinder following the launching of the UNFPA report titled ‘State of World Population 2010’ in October 2010, she said.
The UNFPA report also projected that, with the rate of increase standing at 1.4 per cent, the population of Bangladesh would reach 220 million in 2050.
In an immediate reaction, finance minister AMA Muhith rejected the UNFPA report and said, ‘It seems the honourable clerks have prepared the report sitting at their desks in New York. So, they have to make a statement.’
Muhith also told reporters that, according to the government statistics, the country’s population at that time stood at 14.60 crore.
He said the UNFPA did not contact any of the government agencies and the government did not know whether the UNFPA had any field staff. ‘So, naturally the question arises on what basis it has published the report.’
The UNFPA sources, however, said the total population of Bangladesh calculated conservatively on the basis of the fourth population census conducted in 2001 would be more than 160 million in 2011.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, the population of Bangladesh was 162.2 million in 2009 and in the same year the World Bank put the figure at 160 million.
But, the Statistical Pocket Book 2009 of the BBS said the population of the country in July 2009 stood at 146.6 million, while the finance ministry in its Bangladesh Economic Review 2010 put the figure at 146.1 million.
On the other hand, in the report titled ‘Population Challenges for Bangladesh in the Coming Decades’ of a study conducted by Peter Kim Streatfield and Zunaid Ahsan Karar of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Research, Bangladesh in 2007 said the total population of Bangladesh in mid-2007 stood at around 147 million.
Moreover, according to the July 2011 report of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States, Bangladesh has a population of 158.5 million.
The first population census in the subcontinent was conducted in 1872. Since then, censuses have been conducted almost regularly every 10 years. This year’s census is the fifth one since the country’s independence.
After independence, population and household censuses were conducted in 1974, 1981, 1991, and 2001. According to the fourth census, the number of households in the country was around 2.54 crore and the population size 12.43 crore.
-With New Age input
