Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Karnataka Plan for 2012-13 Finalized

The Annual Plan for the year 2012-13 for the state of Karnataka was finalised here today at a meeting between Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Mr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Chief Minister of Karnataka, Shri D. V. Sadananda Gowda. The plan size has been agreed at Rs. 42,030crore. 

Commenting on the priorities of the 12th plan, Mr Ahluwalia said that the plan will have incentive for efficient water management as water crisis in the long term were more serious than the energy crisis and both States and centre need to realise the need to take necessary steps in this direction. He said water use efficiency has to be improved urgently. 

On plan performance, Mr Ahluwalia said that the State has a good record in expenditure realisation as well as in fiscal prudence. He said the State can play a more important role in giving lead to other States in introducing technology for improving governance. He said more focussed attention was needed in agriculture and infrastructure sectors. He said investor friendly environment in infrastructure development was required and public private partnership should be encouraged to expedite development process. 

On economic growth and state income, it was pointed out that the growth rate have slowed down recently and was less than the national average. Special attention was required to give necessary impetus to education and health sectors, Attention was also drawn to regional imbalance in social indicators. Need to reduce disparities was stressed and area based intervention was recommended. The overall growth rate of GSDP (at 1999 – 2000 prices) of the State during Tenth Plan period was 6.73% against the all India growth rate of 6.99%. The growth rate of NSDP of the state during the same period was 6.45% against the all India growth rate of 6.96%. The state witnessed a very high growth rate (in terms of GSDP at constant prices) of 12.60% during 2007-08 which has declined sharply to 8.87% in 2010-11. The per capita income in the State has also increased from Rs. 29295 in 2005-06 to Rs. 39301 in 2010-11. 

It was also indicated that the share of primary & secondary sector has fallen over the years while that of tertiary sector has been continuously increasing from 2005-06 onwards. In percentage terms the agriculture & allied sector has declined from 19.54% in 2004-05 to 16.02% in 2010-11. Attention was also drawn to rate of work completion as well as sharp decline in generation of employment under rural employment guarantee programme. The State Government was advised to take necessary steps to enhance coverage of beneficiaries from the minority community as per guideline of the scheme. 

In his comments on the plan performance, Mr Gowda said that Karnataka is one of the few major States that have consistently realized more resource than what was budgeted in the five Year Plans. The State is likely to achieve an expenditure of Rs. 1,14,152 crore against an allocation of Rs. 1,01,664 crore in the Eleventh Five Year Plan. All the sectors have performed reasonably well. The Chief Minister said that to ensure better service delivery with efficiency, transparency, timeliness and accountability and to curtail red tape and delay tactics implementation of the “Karnataka Guarantee of Services to Citizen’s Act 2011” covering 151 services across 11 departments has been initiated. He said Karnataka is among the few states to start the outcome based monitoring through the Result Framework Document developed by the Government of India and is in the process of examining and implementing the Karnataka’s Expenditure Reforms Commission’s report, which focuses on the planning process, size and nature of schemes and subsidy. 

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