Planning Commission completes draft Ninth Plan document
Press Trust of India
New Delhi, Jan 20: The planning Commission has completed the draft ninth five year plan document for consideration of the new government that will take over after general elections in March.The newly appointed member secretary of the commission S R Hashim told reporters on Tuesday that it would however, be up to the new government to either accept this draft with or without modifications, or start the exercise all over again. The draft, completed nearly four months after the mid-September 1997 deadline, aims at seven per cent economic growth during the plan period (1997-2002) on an annualized basis with a projected outlay of Rs 875,000 crore including central assistance of about Rs 374,000 crore. Hashim, working as member, agriculture, was appointed member secretary as his predecessor Bimal Jalan took over as RBI governor in November last year.Adoption of the Ninth Plan will take a minimum of three to four months after installation of the new government, and that too if the draft prepared by the
present body is accepted. Undeterred by fall of United Front government and dissolution of the Lok Sabha, the commission continued with its exercise and the draft was finalized after two meetings of the full Planning Commission and about five dozen sittings of the internal commission. Hashim said the present crisis in the East Asian countries have reconfirmed India's dependence on domestic resources to a large extent for Plan development. "Inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) should be in relation to capacity to absorb", he said. The government has set a target of $10 billion FDI per annum and the Ninth Plan will take steps to attain this target, the approach paper to the present Plan has said. He blamed the nature of investments including large inflow of short term foreign funds and the hype surrounding such funds for the debacle in countries like South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia. On the recent package of measures announced by the RBI to strengthen the rupee against dollar, he said
"holding the rupee is the right thing to do at this moment. This will help to get out of the crisis psychology in the light of crumbling of the Indonesian rupiah and Korean won".He also emphasized the need to strengthen the country's financial sector including insurance to insulate India from turbulence of the nature witnessed in other Asian countries. Hashim said the restoration of the five per cent cut in plan expenditure will be helpful, but he did not say whether states have asked for more plan funds after the Centre decided not to devolve the revenue collected from VDIS this fiscal.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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