DOHA: Qatar’s new population policy to be unveiled after a year will be more realistic and consistent with Qatar National Vision 2030, Minster of Development Planning and Statistics and Permanent Population Committee (PPC) Chairman H E Dr Saleh bin Mohamed Salem Al Nabit said yesterday.
The new policy will be more suitable to meet future challenges and more comprehensive since it is being developed on the basis of results of the mini-census 2015, he told a press conference on the sidelines of an event at Four Seasons Hotel held by PPC to mark Qatar Population Day under the theme ‘First six-year evaluation of the population policy’.
On the population structure in the light of mini-census results, he said there is imbalance in many aspects and will continue in the foreseeable future.
The government will work to limit its impact whether on gender basis or quality of the population in terms of skilled workforce and ratio of singles to families, he added.
The imbalance in population structure appears in many aspects - for instance, for every 100 females, there are 300 males.
However, other aspects seem to be more reasonable such as the rate of unemployment which is the lowest in the world. Participation in job market is also high.
In his opening address at the event, Al Nabit said Qatar has completed a significant part of the population policy evaluation in line with United Nations guidelines.
He said Qatar Population Day this year comes after the completion of the first stage of the population policy evaluation.
He said the PPC Technical Bureau, in cooperation with United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and after outlining the population policy pivot points, has completed a significant part of the required evaluation.
Minister of Energy and Industry H E Dr Mohammed Saleh Abdullah Al Sada stressed the importance of in-depth and comprehensive reviews undertaken by PPC in terms of the Population Policy Action Plan.
He said the Ministry of Energy and Industry is ready for cooperation with the PPC to enable the Population Policy to become a national programme.
In his speech, Mohamed Abdul Ahad, Regional Director, UNFPA for Arab States, focused on the importance of cooperation between PPC and UNFPA, pointing out that the periodic review and continuous evaluation of population policies are vital.
Thus, the evaluation carried out by Qatar for its population policy provides another example of commitment to professional standards and best practices in dealing with population and development issues.
In the second session, Sultan Al Kuwari, PPC Vice-Chairman, gave a presentation on the action plan and priorities of the second phase of the population policy evaluation plan (October 2015-2016). The third and final session was for working groups to discuss the six themes of the population policy to develop future directions for the second phase of the first six-year evaluation of the population policy.
The Peninsula