• PAGE ONE
• INDEX
• HOME

Plan panel meet to deliberate on sensitive issues

G. Srinivasan

NEW DELHI, June 20

A FULL-FLEDGED meeting of the Planning Commission under the Chairmanship of the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, is scheduled on June 27 to decide the core agenda for the convening of the 49th meeting of the National Development Council (NDC) for the launch of the Tenth Plan.

Government sources told Business Line that in order to avoid any undue strain to the recuperating Prime Minister who recently underwent a knee surgery, the full meeting of the Plan panel is being held at his residence spread over two days on June 27 and 29 with a day off in the deliberations.

NDC meeting would be convened after the monsoon session of Parliament ends in August to give imprimaturs to the approach paper for the Tenth Plan scheduled to be launched on April 1, 2002.

Foremost on the agenda are a clutch of politically sensitive subjects such as granting special category status (SCS) to Jammu and Kashmir and Assam with retrospective effect from 1969, the sources said, adding that there may not be any improvement in the resource position of these States on account of the grant-loan ratio (90:10) with effect from April 1, 1969.

Other items on the agenda include placing Uttaranchal on the list of SCS, status report on the progress of the NDC sub-committee on transfer of Centrally Sponsored schemes (CSS), the performance of the core plan and revision of the Gadgil formula for all ocation of Normal Central Assistance (NCA) for the annual plan of States.

On the issue of transfer of CSS, the Planning Commission has already identified a number of CSS which would either be weeded out or converged on a single scheme in the Tenth Plan and these include as many as 11 in the Department of Secondary and Higher E ducation and 13 in the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the sources said.

Referring to the revision of the Gadgil formula, the sources said that while normal central assistance released to States currently is 90 per cent grant and 10 per cent loan for SCS and 30 per cent grant and 70 per cent loan to non-SCS. While reviewing t he formula, the full-meeting might plump for giving 50:50 grant loan ratio for non-SCS and for SCS the existing pattern would be retained.

Asked about the implications of according 50 per cent grant to non-special category States, the sources explained that of late 60 per cent of the revenue expenditure of the State Plan goes for spending on social infrastructure like health and education a nd other public amenities, leaving them with lesser amount for capital outlays. As such, if grant element is enhanced to non-SCS States, it would cushion them to that extent.

On the issue of core plan, the sources said the Mid-Term Appraisal of the Ninth Plan pinpointed shortcomings in the resource mobilisation of States. It was found that the States had not been able to mobilise resources in order to fully achieve the Plan o utlays approved in their discussion with the Plan panel. There has been a gap between the approved outlay and expenditure of the States which has affected almost all sectors.

Accordingly, in the 2000-01 annual plan for States, the determination of overall plan size was made contingent on two factors: (i) The trend of aggregate actual resource mobilisation for the plan of the State over the first three years of the Ninth Plan and (ii) a realistic and conservative estimate of resources available for financing the Plan in the year 2000-01, arrived at during official level discussions of the Plan panel with State Governments and this was described as `Core Plan'.

The sources said that with the advent of the core plan since last year, the difference between the originally approved outlay and the revised outlay for all States put together for the Annual Plan 2000-01 is around Rs 7900 crore as compared to around Rs 13,600 crore for 1999-2000.

In percentage terms, the difference in revised outlay and originally approved outlay has come down to 9.5 per cent in 2000-01 as compared to about 16 per cent for 1999-2000, the sources noted.