12th five year Plan highlights

The proposed 12th five year plan document that seeks to raise the average annual economic growth during the five-year period ending March 2017 to 8.2 percent from 7.9 percent achieved in the previous Plan.

The meeting of Full Planning Commission, which has been called by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, will also vet various other social sector targets relating to poverty alleviation, infant mortality, enrollment ratio and job creation.

Besides other things, the 12th Plan seeks to achieve 4 percent agriculture sector growth while that for manufacturing sector is aimed at 10 percent.

The total plan size has been proposed at Rs 47.7 lakh crore, 135 percent more that the investments realised in the 11th Plan (2007-12).

The meeting will be attended by regular Planning Commission members and key cabinet ministers.

Once the document is approved by the full Plan panel, it will be considered by the Union Cabinet and then pass it to National Development Council(NDC), the apex decision making body, for final approval.

In view of the ongoing global problems, the average annual growth target for the 12th Plan has been scaled down at 8.2 percent from 9 percent stated  in the Approach Paper to the 12th Plan.

As regards poverty alleviation, the Commission proposed to bring down the poverty ratio by 10 percentage points during the Plan period. At present the poverty is around 30 percent of the population.

The targetted  job creation in the non-farm sectors during the five year period  is five crore.

In education efforts would be made to create 20 lakh additional seats in higher education and eliminate gender and social gaps in school enrollment.

It also aims to reduce infant mortality rate to 25 and maternal mortality ratio to one per 1,000 live births by end of the Plan period.

It also seeks to increase investment in infrastructure sector to 9 percent of the GDP by 2016-17.

The other monitorable targets include reduction of aggregate technical and commercial losses in power sector to 20 percent and electrification of all villages during the five year policy period.

The document proposes to create additional generation capacity of 30,000 MW in renewable energy segment during the 12th Plan period.

Efforts, it said, will also be made to provide banking services to 90 percent of Indian household by the end of the 12th Plan period.

As regards exports of goods and services, the commission said, the target would be to increase them to 2 percent of the Gross Domestic Product(GDP).