Farms drag down growth target: PM

For the next two years of the Plan, Singh said it was important to increase investments in the entire chain of activities related to agriculture — the supply of inputs and credit, diversification of crops, better production practices and improved post-harvest management.

The Prime Minister wanted the chief ministers to explore the possibility of doubling farm output in 10 years for which he suggested an NDC sub-committee for concrete action.

One suggestion that Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia underlined was the need to realise ‘‘user charges’’ for water and electricity.

Given that Rs 91,000 crore was required to complete 388 ongoing major and minor irrigation projects, Rs 70,000 crore for watershed development to cover 77 million hectares of farmland and Rs 1,72,000 crore for building national highways upto 2012.

Ahluwalia also highlighted the following features of the Tenth Plan’s mid-term appraisal:

• Inflation under control

• External payments/forex reserves position comfortable

• Private corporate sector investment turned around

• Revival of industrial growth in 2004-05, with industrial sector recording 8.1 per cent growth

• High saving rate, Centre’s fiscal deficit down

• Favourable prospect of attracting FDI

The key areas of concern that he pointed out included:

• Agricultural growth down from 3.2 per cent (1980-81 to 1995-96) to an average of below 2 per cent. Infrastructure inadequacies likely to prevent industrial growth from reaching double-digit level

• Key social sector areas like health, education, gender equality lagging behind target

• Employment generation not upto expectations

• Organised sector employment down in absolute terms in the past three years

• Uncertainty due to high international oil prices likely to affect growth

On infrastructure development, the Prime Minister referred to two specific areas — overcoming the power shortage that is plaguing virtually all states and creating an environment for attracting both public and private investment in the sector.

For this, he said, ‘‘we should restore the health of electricity agencies in states by reducing average transmission and commercial losses by 10 percentage points in the next two years and focus on providing quality power at appropriate prices.’’

Singh said to improve the quality of district administration for development of rural areas, it was necessary that civil servants were given minimum security of tenure as changes without notice and short tenures do not produce accountable results.