Had the population growth rate been reduced from 3 percent to 2 percent, the problems of congestion and shortages in the level of infrastructure and social services would have been avoided, the poor would have obtained better access to education and health and the incidence of poverty would have been much lower than what it is today.
But as if this neglect of human development was not enough, the country slacked in the 1990s and began to slip in growth, exports, revenues, and development spending and got entrapped into deep morass of external and domestic indebtedness. As a result the incidence of poverty rose from 18 percent in 1988-89 to 33 percent by the end of the 1990s.