A day after the National Development Council gave the green signal to the 12th Five Year Plan, the Bharatiya Janata Party criticised it on Friday, saying it was based on unrealistic assumptions and the government had lost the political will to carry it to its logical end.
BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said the Plan was a late starter and the whole exercise remained imaginary. It did not inspire or assure the nation of faster development with equity.
He argued that scaling down the growth target from 9 per cent initially to 8.2 per cent and then to 8 per cent spoke of the lack of confidence, focus, direction and vision of the United Progressive Alliance government.
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His case was that the Plan sets a target of 5.5 per cent for the first two years, making it impossible even to assume that the overall 8 per cent GDP growth over the five years would be achieved.
“Many of the assumptions are unrealisable and, therefore, the targets are also unattainable. The gross budgetary support (GBS) is expected to be 5.23 per cent of the GDP over the Plan period. However, the actual realised GBS during the 11th Five Year Plan was only 4.69 per cent,” he said.
“Likewise, the assumptions of tax to GDP ratio seem to be highly optimistic. The same is true with the Internal and Extra Budgetary Resources of the Central Public Sector Undertakings. The subsidy burden projected is also unrealistic in the face of various announcements made by the government, and which it is likely to make on the eve of elections,” Mr. Javadekar contended.
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According to him, the underperformance of every sector of the 11th Plan made the 12th Plan unrealisable. Whether it was the Railways, Roads, Power, Mining, Housing, Irrigation and other targets, the government could not achieve the targets on all these major segments.