NITI Aayog completes appraisal of 12th Five-Year Plan

The NITI Aayog has completed the appraisal of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan, which will be placed before its Governing Council that is chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The meeting of the Governing Council is expected soon.

NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya on Wednesday said the practice of Five-Year Plans will end after the current Plan gets over in 2016-17. “It would instead be replaced with three documents,” he told reporters adding that the Vision Document is likely to be in place before Budget 2017.

These would cover the short-term through a three-year Action Plan, the medium-term by seven-year strategy and the long-term by a 15-year Vision Document.

Sources said the economic growth is estimated to have “recovered” in the last two financial years, but had underperformed in 2012-13 and 2013-14. “Going by the old series, the economy performed worse than the policy logjam scenario that was envisaged in the original Plan and pegged growth at 5 per cent to 5.5 per cent,” said a person close to the development, adding that in subsequent years, the economy has seen to have recovered in both the new and the old series.

“The Vision Document will give a sense of what to expect India to be in 2022-23. It will look at measures like per capita GDP, GDP, agriculture, services and manufacturing,” he said, adding that the NITI Aayog has already talked with economists, agriculture specialists and scientists on the issue.

Significantly, the Aayog will also hold consultations with defence and internal security experts for the Vision document, an area that was not looked into by its predecessor the Planning Commission. Meanwhile, sources said the appraisal of the Twelfth Plan (2012-17) would broadly cover the first four financial years and the Budget Estimate for the current fiscal.

The appraisal would follow nine broad themes including the economy and policies, macroeconomic factors, employment and skill development, governances, human resource development, physical infrastructure, environmental sustainability, agriculture and rural transformation and urban transformation.

The NITI Aayog, which is in charge of identifying loss-making public sector units for strategic sales, has also submitted two reports to the government and is working on a third report on the issue.

“We have submitted two reports — on loss making and sick PSUs and second on PSUs identified for strategic disinvestment,” said Panagariya, adding that the third report would also focus on firms for majority stake sales.