Lens on tardy pace of projects

Panel finds many ministries and departments lagging in 12th Plan implementation

The Planning Commission has directed its divisions to convene meetings with ministries and departments in sectors where little or no progress has been made in implementing major recommendations in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-17) document.

Officials said the commission wants all ministries and departments to decide on a definite time-frame in which these can be done.

"The exercise would not only help improve implementation of the 12th Plan but indicate the challenges in respective sectors and provide ready input for drafting the Mid-Term Appraisal (MTA)," said a senior official directly involved in the process.

While full work on the MTA would start only after a new government took over in Delhi later this year, he said the commission had begun preparing a dossier on sectors where progress has been made and where it had slipped, with reasons. "This would enable the next commission to immediately get on with the MTA work," the official said.

Preliminary analysis showed many recommendations in the infrastructure sector and the overall economy had yet to be initiated by many departments and ministries.

"For example in the railways, the Plan document says there is need to re-organise the Railway Board, as this is not conducive to running the railways as an economic and business enterprise. However, no action has been initiated on this. Similarly, for public sector units, the document says their corporate governance structure should be changed but there is no clarity on the progress," the official said. He said similar examples from other sectors, economic or social, would be compiled.

In a recent analysis by the commission showed its target of attracting Rs 56 lakh crore of investment (at current prices) in the infra sector during the Plan period could go off-track because of abysmal performance in the first year, 2012-13. Infra investment in FY13, across all sectors, has been Rs 534,645 crore (at 2011-12 prices), the lowest since 2010-11.

The worst was telecommunications, where infra investment slid to Rs 36,963 crore in 2012-13, about 37.5 per cent of the target. The other poor performers were oil and gas pipelines, which saw investments dipping to Rs 4,990 crore in 2012-13, about 44 per cent of the target. Infra investment across sectors - power, non-conventional energy, roads and bridges, railways, mass rapid transit systems, ports, airports - all dropped below their 2011-12 levels.

In 2012-13, private investment in infrastructure dropped to Rs 163,552 crore, the lowest since 2008-09, while central investment in infrastructure fell to Rs 184,960 crore, also the least since 2008-09. However, state governments' investment in infrastructure in 2012-13 was the highest in six years.