Islamabad, Nov 29 (IANS): It is not possible for Pakistan, which failed to achieve the targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an expert has said.

Developing countries like Pakistan should identify goals based on their resources and try to meet those, Dawn online quoted National University of Science and Technology (NUST) as saying on Saturday.

The MDGs were announced in 2000 and featured eight goals and 40 indicators to achieve, which Pakistan was unable to do, NUST School of Social Sciences and Humanities principal Ashfaque Hasan Khan said in a seminar here.

"The SDGs has 17 goals and 169 indicators to achieve. We could not achieve the MDGs and its 40 indicators, so how will we be able to achieve the SDGs and its 169 indictors," he said here.

Pakistan did not have the capacity to measure the indicators. Instead, he proposed that developing countries identify goals depending on their resources, and create the capacity to measure the indicators.

The United Nation's eight MDGs -- which ranged from halving extreme poverty rates to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 -- formed a blueprint agreed to by all the world's countries.

The SDGs, officially known as Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, are United Nation's set of aspiration goals for all the countries in the world with 169 targets.