Kathmandu, June 28:

Minister for Physical Planning and Works Hisila Yami today said that urbanisation without adequate focus on rural development “will prove to be a bane for the whole country.”

“We cannot neglect the urbanisation trend of the world when we are searching for our identities,” she said at a programme organised to launch State of the World Population Report 2007 “Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth” along with Youth Supplement “Growing up Urban”.

Junko Sazaki, the representative of the United Nation’s Population Fund, said that the size of the urban population will double by next year.