Govt Asks Panel To Revise Final 9th Plan Draft

The Planning Commission has been asked to revise the final draft of the Ninth Plan in light of the National Agenda for Governance of the Bharatiya janata party-led coalition government.

The plan panel will use the opportunity to review plan funding on major projects in view of the economic sanctions imposed by the United States and other developed nations following the recent nuclear tests, Yojana Bhavan sources said.

The decision to review and revise the Ninth Plan draft ends three months of uncertainty over what the new government wanted to do with the draft plan .

The Ninth Plan draft had been finalised under the deputy chairmanship of Madhu Dandavate during the tenure of the United Front government.

The plan review exercise has been initiated by member-secretary S R Hasim.

Planning Commission deputy chairman Jaswant Singh and minister of state for Planning, Ram Naik, are yet to hold a meeting of plan panel experts, to give direction to the plan revision exercise.

This may be the first time that a five year plan is being revised by advisors and consultants in the absence of members of the plan panel.

The post of members have remained vacant since Dandavate and his team quit after the change in government.

Usually, a review and revision exercise is initiated after a full meeting of the Planning Commission comprising the deputy chairman and its members, which include full-time members and five cabinet ministers.

The prime minister who is the chairman of the plan panel often presides over such meetings.

"There is no difficulty in holding a full meeting of the Planning Commission with the members we have now. Constitutionally, there is no problem at all," a Yojana Bhavan source said.

Asked about the move to incorporate the impact of economic sanctions in the revised plan, the source said: "To the extent we know of the effect of sanctions, we will try to incorporate. There are several dimensions to the sanctions and we cannot predict what will happen in the course of time. We will make some assumptions based on whatever information we have as of now."

The focus on the government's national agenda for governance is to increase public investments in infrastructure and social sector.

This will mean a further increase in plan outlays for these sectors.

But, plan panel experts are concerned that it may not be possible to increase public investments in certain sectors if external assistance is reduced or shut off.

For instance, the National Thermal Power Corporation has planned some major projects on the assumption that the projects would be supported by funds from the Oversees Economic Co-operation Fund of Japan .

But OECF has made it clear that it will not be possible to fund future projects in view of economic sanctions imposed by the Japanese government.

At another level, the government's insistence to keep fiscal deficit under check is a major stumbling block in the Planning Commission's efforts to increase public investments in infrastructure and other areas.

The budgetary support for the 1998-99 plan was tentatively pegged at Rs 75,000 crore.

This was reduced by the finance ministry to Rs 72,000 crore just a few days before the budget was presented in Parliament by finance minister Yashwant Sinha.

This was done because the finance ministry felt that a lower budgetary support was necessary to keep the fiscal deficit under check.

The draft Ninth Plan has recommended a total budgetary support of Rs 375,000 crore in five years, which works out to Rs 75,000 crore a year.

"The first two years of the Ninth Plan _ 1997-98 and 1998-99 _ has seen much lower budgetary support to annual plans. At this rate, it will be difficult to meet the Ninth Plan target of public investments. The desire of the new government to further increase public investments can hardly be fulfilled," a plan expert said.