ISLAMABAD: The Bureau of Statistics has released the final figures of the sixth Population and Housing Census 2017 which states that the population of Pakistan is 207, 684,626 with an annual growth rate of 2.40%.
The total population consists of 106,018,220 males and 101,344,632 females while the population of transpersons is 321,774. The rural population is 132,013,789 and the urban population is 75,670,837. Karachi remained the most populated city of Pakistan, with a total population of 10,624,894, according to the report.
The total population of Punjab stands at 109.99 million, Sindh 47.85 million, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 30.51 million, Balochistan 12.34 million, Islamabad 2 million and erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) 4.99 million.
The report states at people between 15-64 years of age form 55.98% of the population, while the youth — 15-24 years of age — constitute 19.19% of the population
The literacy rate in the country has reached 58.92% as compared to 43.92% in 1998, with 87.48 million people in the country being literate.
The census results also state that 7.08pc of the people mentioned Urdu as their mother language, 38.78pc Punjabi, 14.57pc Sindhi, 18.24pc Pashto, 3.02pc Balochi, 0.17pc Kashmiri, 12.19pc Seraiki, 2.44pc Hindko, 1.24pc Brahvi and 2.26pc others.
The census 2017 was conducted in two phases, with each phase having a duration of 30 days. Phase-I started from March 15 and ended on April, 14, 2017 in which 61 admin districts comprising of 79,773 blocks were enumerated.
Phase-II started with a gap of 10 days from April 25 till May 24, 2017. Eighty-Nine (89) admin districts comprising of 89,170 blocks were enumerated during this period.
Last month, the federal government had approved the official release of the Census 2017 results which had been withheld for the last couple of years.
The decision was taken during a virtual meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Following the meeting, federal minister Asad Umar held a press conference and said majority of the provinces have agreed to accept the results of Census 2017 and officially publish them. Sindh had opposed the exercise and also rejected the release of the final results that were approved by the CCI last month.
