The year 2019 will be an important milestone in the global effort to pursue Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as it enters the end of the first four-year cycle in a 15-year period, and progress on each goal is mostly slow, a United Nations official said.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, the executive secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), said according to 2017 data, it would be difficult for Asia-Pacific countries to achieve all 16 goals by 2030.

“If you see the progress of the achievement between 2000 toward the target in 2030, […] almost all of the targets will be difficult to achieve for the whole of Asia-Pacific, except for quality education, and perhaps for poverty,” she said at an annual conference in Jakarta on Monday.