Plan panel meet to decide financing pattern

The full Planning Commission, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is scheduled to meet on August 6 to decide the overall financing pattern of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-12).

The Plan is expected to set an average 9 per cent gross domestic product growth rate target.

For the current fiscal (2007-08), the GDP growth rate target is likely to be set at 8.7 per cent, rising up to 9.3 per cent in 2010-11 and 10 per cent in the terminal year 2011-12. For 2006-07, the GDP growth rate was 9.4 per cent.

Among the key items on the agenda is a proposal to allocate as many as seven identified priority programmes including Bharat Nirman and the infrastructure upgrade initiative as much as 70.2 per cent of the gross budgetary support (GBS) for the Plan period.

In effect, this massive spending on the social sector will slip over into the term of the next government beyond 2009.

The meeting was expected to finalise the GBS for the entire five-year period, a source said.

It would also deliberate the issue of raising the GBS beyond Rs 15,76,000 crore in the second and third years of the Plan, which the working group on assessment of financial resources for the Plan had suggested.

The working group has recommended a GBS of Rs 2,21,772 crore for 2008-09 and the commission is seeking an additional Rs 27,959 crore.

For the third year of the Plan, the commission has pitched for an additional Rs 24,709 crore over the working group's recommendation of Rs 2,77,565 crore.