The government says Bhutan will not face overpopulation if the 1.8 percent growth rate is maintained. The population growth rate of the country stabilised at 1.8 percent since last year. Bhutan has seen significant decline in the population growth rate. From 3.1 percent in 1994 it has reduced to 1.8 now.
Bhutan’s total population comes to about 700,000. Even though the number of population seem small compared to other countries, but not against the size of the country.
“In the population policy which we are formulating right now, by 2050 we will have a little over one million population, if the growth rate remains at 1.8 percent,” said the National Statistic Bureau’s officiating Chief, Tashi Dorjee.
Today, Bhutan joined the other countries to observe the 25th World Population Day. The day was first observed in 1987 when global world population was at five billion. The total world population now stands at seven billion.
The theme for this year’s World Population Day is universal access to reproductive health services. Discussing reproductive health service has been a bit of problem for Bhutan as 50 percent of population is under the age of 22.
Yeshey Dorji of UNFPA said a huge chunk of population is entering into reproductive age. “It is still quite sensitive to discuss these issues in schools, if we do not provide this knowledge to our youth we will always go into bad practices.”
