The Planning Commission on Saturday kicked off the exercise to formulate the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-17) with an aim to accelerate the economic growth to 10 per cent, up from 8.1 per cent expected in the current plan.
“This meeting was for consultation with experts for the ’Approach’ for the Twelfth Plan. We discussed broad issues with experts today,” Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told reporters after the first meeting for preparing ‘Approach’ document for the 12th Plan.
Besides the members of the Commission, the meeting was attended by various experts, including UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani, former Nasscom president Kiran Karnik, former Thermax chairperson Anu Aga, former cabinet secretary Naresh Chandra and CPR senior fellow Sanjoy Hazarika.
On economic growth target for the 12th Plan, Ahluwalia said, “Prime Minister has asked us that we should aim for 10 per cent growth in next Plan. Everybody feels and we also think that the growth should be inclusive.”
The average annual growth target for the 11th Plan was scaled down to 8.1 per cent from 9 per cent on account of the impact of the global financial meltdown on the Indian economy. The growth rate during 2008-09 slipped to 6.7 per cent from over 9 per cent in the preceding three years.
The economy grew by 7.4 per cent during 2009-10 and is expected to go up to 8.5 per cent in the current fiscal.
Ahluwalia said, “Not only inclusive, the growth should be sustainable. That means without environmental damage. There are governance and implementation issues also.”
“A large number of people think that we are spending money but that is not reaching the beneficiary. So discussions today centered around the steps required to improve the delivery system in next Plan period,” he added.
Earlier on Thursday, Ahluwalia had indicated that agriculture growth target of four per cent could be retained in the next Plan.
“The 4 per cent agriculture growth is a good target for the 12th Plan (2012-17), which could not be achieved so far, as envisaged in the 11th Plan (2007-12),” he had said.
