Mid-term appraisal of 12th Five-year Plan likely to delay

NEW DELHI: The much-awaited mid-term appraisal of the 12th Five-year Plan (2012-17) may get delayed as the new government is not keen to rush this, primarily because the implementation of the Plan itself was delayed by a year. The outgoing commission had suggested that the mid-term appraisal of the Plan be done by the new commission by October this year.

Last week, Planning Commission officials made a presentation to Inderjit Singh Rao, minister of state with independent charge, about the first few things that the new commission will have to do, including the mid-term appraisal, as has been the practice all these years.

However, a senior Planning Commission official, who was part of this meeting, told ET that the minister was apprehensive about doing the appraisal in October as he feels that the Plan itself was delayed.

According to the official, who did not wish to be identified, the minister told his officials that the government should not be in a hurry. "I think we should give more time to ministries to implement the scheme before we do the appraisal," the minister is believed to have told his officials.

The mid-term appraisal of the Plan is expected to align the policies proposed with the vision of the new government besides revising down key targets.

The National Development Council had adopted the 12th Five-year Plan in December 2012 while the Plan proposals should have kicked in from April 2012. This affected implementation and led to cost escalation and inordinate delay in the development delivery process.

Besides, the overall slowdown in the economy also impacted sentiment as a result of which there was a resource crunch in the system that led to slashing of funds for almost all schemes.

The 12th Plan has pegged the average annual growth rate at 8% and aggregate Plan resources at .`37.16 lakh crore during the five-year period starting 2012-13.

Besides, the 12th Plan is different from the previous ones because it was for the first time that the Planning Commission came out with three different economic scenarios. As per the "aspirational" scenario one – of strong inclusive growth – India’s economic growth will average 8% in the five years. However, in the "policy logjam" scenario, which is the worst-case model, GDP growth could slow to 5-5.5%, it had said.