Nepal’s Urban population reaches 27.07 %

 Kathmandu, Jan. 2

Contrary to the earlier projections, the National Statistics Office (NSO) said that Nepal's urban population has significantly increased from 22.31 per cent to 27.07 per cent between 2011 and 2021.

According to the report on Degree of Urbanisation in Nepal published by the NSO on Tuesday, peri-urban population has increased from 39.19 per cent to 39.75 per cent. Further, the rural population has decreased from 38.5 per cent to 33.19 per cent in the last 10 years.

In the rural municipalities, 58 per cent of the population was in the rural cluster within 2,412 wards, while 36.1 per cent was mostly in peri-urban areas (664 wards) and 5.9 per cent of the population in the urban areas (139 wards).

According to the report, even in the municipalities, only 28.4 per cent of the population are in urban areas (591 wards), majority that is 46 per cent are in the peri-urban areas (1,285 wards) and still 25.4 per cent in the rural cluster within 1,244 wards.

These results are contrary to the projections of urban population made so far in the country. According to the Census data of 2021, the urban municipality population is 66.17 per cent and that of the rural municipality is 33.83 per cent.

Since the population in 66.27 per cent urban areas was not further categorised into urbanising or peri-urban municipalities, it was necessary to study and contextualise the international practices to re-define the level of urbanisation of the municipal population, said Dr. Hemraj Regmi, Spokesperson of the NSO.

Majority of the population still resides in peri-urban areas that are regarded as ‘urban’, while in character are urbanising. Yet, the rural population is still one third, while based on the trend, the migration from rural areas to peri and urban areas provides an insight of pressure on the urban areas to accommodate and for the rural areas to retain the population, said Dr. Regmi.

The NSO has made the rural, peri-urban and urban classification at the ward level, based on the threshold of population, population density, rasterised built-up area and contiguity of the characteristics.

Further, in terms of the ecological region, the rural population is concentrated in the Hill (66 per cent) and Mountain regions (16 per cent). Peri-urban population is concentrated in the Tarai region (85 per cent) and urban population is concentrated in the Hill region (53 per cent), which is skewed due to Pokhara Metropolitan and Kathmandu valley, followed by the Tarai region (39 per cent).

Similarly, in sub-metropolitan cities, 39 per cent of the population are in peri-urban areas and 53 per cent are living in urban categorized areas. In metropolitan cities, 17 per cent are in peri-urban areas, 2.3 per cent still in areas of rural characteristics and 80.7 per cent in urban areas.

Even in urban municipalities, the main characteristic of the settlement is still peri-urban and a significant population in the rural landscape, concluded the NSO. Likewise, the total number of wards in rural municipalities are higher (3,685) when compared to the urban and peri-urban areas, noting it contains only 33 per cent of the total population.

In terms of province-based calculation, the highest population concentration is in Madhesh province (19.9 per cent), followed by Bagmati province (14.6 per cent) and the lowest in Karnali province (1.2 per cent).

The data shows imbalance in distribution of the urban population with highest concentration in the Tarai province - in Madhesh and Lumbini. In Madhesh province, the majority of the wards (971) are of peri-urban characteristics. Bagmati is the second most urban province, where there are 672 rural wards in comparison to 449 wards in peri and urban areas. In Karnali province, 637 wards are of rural characteristics with 75 wards of urban and 6 of peri urban characteristics.

Currently, Nepal has three-tiered government system. It comprises 753 local units or municipalities. Among them, 293 are urban municipalities (including metropolitan and sub-metropolitan cities) and 460 are rural municipalities. The NSO had used the methodology of the United Nations Statistical Commission to harmonise the definition of urban and rural areas globally. 

 Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 3 January 2024.