NDC to approve 11th Plan mid-term review next month

The National Development Council (NDC) will approve the mid-term review of the 11th Plan at its next meeting scheduled for the second week of July.

Besides approving the mid-term review, the nation's apex planing body NDC that comprises all the Union ministers and chief ministers, is also likely to deliberate on the Naxal menace, that has become a serious threat to national security now. The high-powered body is headed by the Prime Minister.

The Cabinet Committee on Security that met on June 10 had failed to arrive at a consensus on deploying the Army to fight the Naxals. Now the government may rope in ex-service men and further strengthen paramilitary forces.

In the recent past, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had also asked the Plan panel to work out a special package for the Naxal-infested regions.

"The Prime Minister's Office has said we need to work on the Left-wing extremism (hit) districts...This is happening for the first time...We are looking at the entire development strategy," Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia had told PTI in a recent interview.

The home ministry in 2008 had identified 33 Left wing extremism-hit districts spread over eight states--Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh.

The mid-term review was placed before the full Planing Commission headed by Prime Minister on March 23. In the mid-term review document, the Commission had lowered the growth rate for the current plan to 8.1 per cent from 9 per cent in the wake of the global financial crisis that slowed the rate of country's economic expansion.

The Commission had projected in the mid-term review that the economy would expand by 8.5 per cent in the current fiscal and rise to 9 per cent in 2011-12. It is a practice that after getting the full Plan panel clearance, the review-term review is placed before the Cabinet and then to the NDC for final approval.

The Commission had set an average annual growth target of 9 per cent for the current Plan-- beginning with 8.5 per cent in the first year and closing with 10 per cent in the last year of the XIth Plan.

Following the global financial meltdown, the growth rate had slipped to 6.7 per cent in 2008-09 from over 9 per cent in the preceding three years. Thereafter, the growth recovered to 7.4 per cent last fiscal.

To achieve a high growth rate, the Commission suggested focussing on fiscal consolidation and to maintain an investor-supportive economic environment.