At a meeting of the full plan panel held here on Tuesday to approve the revised ninth plan draft, prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee directed that the government's intiatives and objectives in the economic reforms programme should be spelt out clearly in each of the sectors of the economy.

A sector-wise revised ninth plan draft will be later submitted for a formal cabinet approval by the first week of December.

The downward revision of the plan comes at a time when there has been a considerable slowdown in the economy. Pointing towards this, plan panel member Montek Singh Ahluwalia said: "it would a good performance if the economy grew at about 6 per cent in the current fiscal."

Even as he refused to divulge the anticipated industrial or agricultural growth in the current fiscal, he said that the fiscal deficitwould be under pressure and it was essential to accelerate economic growth in the coming months.

"The growth rate in the first two years of the plan period had been considerably low," Ahluwalia said, adding "we would target at achieving a seven per cent-plus growth rate in the remaining three years of the ninth plan."

The revised plan draft envisages working towards an accelerated growth target of over seven per cent even though the average growth rate has been pegged down to 6.5 per cent from the earlier 7 per cent.

Ahluwalia said each chapter of the earlier draft was being redrafted incorporating reform initiative, special action programme of the prime minister and change in policy and emphasis of the plan.

Member secretary SR Hashim said that the agricultural growth was set to show a better performance in the current fiscal as compared to the previous period.

However, a slight difference in the total plan size may come about as compared to the previous estimate. The previous plan draft hadenvisaged a public sector outlay of Rs 8,75,000 crore at 1996-97 prices and a gross investment of Rs 21,90,000 crore for attaining a growth target of 7 per cent, Hashim said.

The Commission also approved the full ninth plan without any plan holidays or rolling plan provision despite it being delayed by two years.

Hashim said that targets for various sectors like agriculture and industry were being worked out keeping in mind the failure to achieve the first two years' targets.

Hashim said the revised draft would be placed before the cabinet in the first week of December and the National Development Council (NDC) would meet soon after to approve the ninth plan.

Hashim said the total size of the revised plan could change slightly in view of the special emphasis on social sectors and agriculture.

The revised draft also incorporated the various priorities spelled out by the BJP-led coalition as stated in its national agenda for governance wherein it has laid special emphasis on food and agriculture,water resources, housing, education, health and family welfare, development of infrastructure as well as information technology. It envisaged an allocation of 60 per cent of the plan size to agriculture and rural development.

The final draft of full panel also envisages a later revision of the sectors as when it goes through the National Development Council which will take up the plan document after it is approved by the cabinet.

The final draft of the ninth plan document was earlier made public by the then chairman Madhu Dandavate during the rule of United Front government. Since then the draft document has been seeing a spate of revisions according to the agenda of the BJP-led coalition government which has been fine-tuning it with the priorities of its National Agenda for Governance.