Prime Minister sets target of 10% growth in 12th plan

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has set an ambitious target of 10% economic growth for the country for the 12th plan, starting from the financial year 2012-13 and wants it to be discussed with key ministers on April 21. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 17, 2011, 23:06:01 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has set an ambitious target of 10% economic growth for the country for the 12th plan, starting from the financial year 2012-13 and wants it to be discussed with key ministers on April 21.

"A full Planning Commission meeting having finance minister Pranab Mukerjee, home minister P Chidambaram and HRD minister Kapil Sibal as members will held on April 21 to discuss the growth target for the 12th plan," a top plan panel functionary said.

The approach paper for the next plan will also be discussed.

And, the key issue to be discussed there is whether India is ready to achieve 10% economic growth rate in the five years of the 12th plan. In the 11th plan, ending in 2011-12, India is expected to achieve a growth rate of 8% as against the target of 9%.

The plan panel has told the Prime Minister's Office that achieving 10% growth rate in the 12th plan is possible but resources need to be stretched.

It will also mean that the agriculture will have to grow at 4.5% as against 2.5% growth projected in the 11th plan and manufacturing at 12.4% as against 8.4% in the 11th plan.

For this to happen, the plan panel says the investment rate should increase to about 40% as against 34% in the 11 the plan.

"We are looking at 80% of this investment coming from the private sector which has been buoyant in the past few years," the panel functionary said.

The panel believes that most of the money will come through Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode foundation of which has been laid in the 11th plan. This year, the government is expected to enact pro-industry legislations such as the Companies Bill and new Relief and Rehabilitation Bill to foster growth rate.

If not 10%, the panel says, achieving 9% will not be difficult. It will require agriculture to grow at 4% and manufacturing at 9.8% as per the present trend.

"We expect a direction from the PM and key ministers on how to achieve 10% target," the official said.

While the 11th plan laid emphasis of education and skill development, the 12th is expected to stress on sustainable growth with focus on creating job opportunities, poverty eradication, health facilities to all and faster infrastructure development.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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