PM wants economy reoriented

Addressing the full Planning Commission meeting, Singh said the government should pay greater attention to agriculture, health, education, rural development and reducing regional imbalances.

He said little progress had been made in undertaking governance reforms, especially e-governance, creating an investor-friendly climate, removal of barriers to internal trade and empowerment of the panchayati raj.

The areas had been identified by the National Development Council (NDC) as priority ones and there was now a need to reconstitute the empowered sub-committees with amended terms of reference, Singh said.

The Prime Minister also flagged the transfer of centrally-sponsored schemes to the states as a major commitment of the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP). He said the draft report prepared by a committee set up by the NDC would be examined.

"It is incumbent on us to devise and implement a development strategy which introduces the urgently required corrective steps to achieve sustained high rates of growth in the economy," Singh said.

Though the process of economic reforms initiated by the Congress government in the early 1990s had paid rich dividends, economic performance had deteriorated in the second half of the 1990s, he said.

He also pointed out that agricultural growth had decelerated from the mid-1990s giving rise to a perception that the benefits of economic reforms have bypassed a substantial section of the people.

The Prime Minister said the government had adopted the "innovative" measure of providing a block allocation of Rs 10,000 crore to the commission to be reappropriated for specific projects and programmes in line with NCMP objectives.

Singh said the commission had circulated an approach paper identifying key issues which the Mid-Term Appraisal of the Tenth Five Year Plan would address.

"The approach paper sets out in detail the key areas on concern for our government and the sectors of economic activity which we need to keep in focus during the remainder of the Tenth Plan," Singh said.