"However, we continue to see the 20:20 initiative as a voluntary initiative among interested donor and recipient countries as agreed during the World Summit on Social Development and not as a prescriptive formulation or even the most important factor in additional resource mobilisation," YN Chaturvedi, secretary, Department of Family Welfare, said.

"The clear need is for meeting the commitments towards the `closed package' in a timely manner," he added. He also stressed the need to arrest and reverse the steady decline in Official Development Assistance (ODA).

The Commission began acting from Wednesday as a preparatory committeefor the special session of the General Assembly which will start in June to review the implementation of the Programme of Action adopted at the 1994 Cairo Population Conference.

Chaturvedi also dwelt on India's health and population policies, saying the country has been developing a liberal policy framework for both.

India's policy on population, he said, has been contextual and broadbased and has never been treated as a "number game". It has aimed to stabilise population at a level consistent with requirement of social and economic development, he said.

On Monday Joseph Chamie, director of the Population Division, told the commission that India, along with Pakistan and China, are among the five countries which account for 50 per cent of the annual growth of the world's population. He said his projections indicated that the world's population would increase by three billion people in the next 50 years.

Chaturvedi said India's high population growth rate is duemainly to the large numbers in the reproductive age group and a high fertility rate because of an "unmet need for contraception and in some part because a somewhat high infant mortality rate (IMR) puts a premium on fertility."

He said a reduction in the population growth rate has been recognised as one of the priority in the recently approved Ninth Five-Year Plan. "While the population growth contributed by the large population in the reproductive age group would continue, the other two factors need effective and prompt remedial action," he said.

"The enabling objective of the Ninth Five-Year Plan is to reduce population growth rates by meeting all the needs for contraception and reducing the infant and maternal mortality rates," he said.

Chaturvedi brought to the attention of the commission that the IMR has been reduced in India by more than 50 per cent since 1951 and further decline is expected by the turn of the century. "We have initiatedseveral programmes for promoting child survival and safe motherhood, education of girls and empowerment of women," he said.