SECRETARY to the Treasury, Likolo Ndalamei has said the Government recognises that human population is both an agent and beneficiary of development.

Mr Ndalamei said in Livingstone yesterday that the distribution and growth rate of the population as well as the basic demographic processes of fertility, mortality and migration affected development.

He was speaking yesterday when he opened the Inter-Agency Technical Committee on Population (ITCP) 2009 conference at Protea Hotel.

He said the integration of population dynamics into development planning and programme implementation could not be overemphasised.

Mr Ndalamei said the objectives of the meeting were to revive the ITCP so that the stakeholders were able to report progress on various activities, share information and suggest ways of implementing the national policy.

The ITCP is an umbrella forum for all stakeholders in population related activities whose main function is to reinforce the institutional capacities for programme design, development coordination and evaluation.

Mr Ndalamei said the Government acknowledged that development planning and implementation processes should aim at accommodating the increased demand for goods and services brought about by increases in the size of the population.

"These processes should also aim at influencing the population dynamics and their determinants to keep the size, composition, structure, distribution and growth rates at optimal levels," Mr Ndalamei said.

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) representative Duah Owsu-Sarfo commended the Government for the commitment to contribute to the improvement of standards of living for the Zambian people.

Mr Owsu-Sarfo said on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), there was need to review the population and development challenges that Zambia was facing.

He said it was in order to redefine the institutional mechanisms that the Government had established to facilitate the efficient operationalisation of the national population policy.