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Government sets 10% growth target for 11th Plan
New Delhi October 19, 2006: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said India would aim for a growth rate of 10 per cent in the final years of the
11th Plan to reach the front ranks of fast growing developing countries. He promised that the growth would be inclusive, liberating millions from poverty, ignorance, and disease.
However, he cautioned that the ambition would require sustained effort on many fronts — agricultural growth, increasing of job opportunities, double-digit growth in manufacturing and services, as well as enhancing of commercial investments in power.
Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, today claimed that the government had succeeded in arresting the decline in public investment in agriculture but also expressed the need to further increase investment in agriculture as a proportion of the gross domestic product (GDP).
Addressing the 2nd Agriculture Summit, Singh identified “four deficits” as the cause for “development deficit” in the agrarian and rural economy. These included investment and credit deficit, infrastructure deficit, market economy deficit, and knowledge deficit.
Alluding to the correlation between agrarian prosperity and the demand for manufactured goods and modern services, Singh said an important challenge now was to enhance the real income of farmers.
He said farmers should get better returns for their efforts even though this might hurt some sections of the middle class. Sustained efforts were needed to pull subsistence farmers out of their marginal existence and propel advanced farmers onto the global platform.
While the government would do everything to keep prices under check to ensure a moderate rate of inflation, the interests of the farming community could not be sacrificed.
The prime minister also talked about the need to end the rural-urban divide in each of the four key deficit areas. “A balanced development of urban and rural economies is vital for sustainable development and social and political stability.”
Claiming that the government had achieved the target of doubling institutional credit flow to agriculture in two years, instead of the stipulated three years, he said short-term crop loans were now available to farmers at 7 per cent interest. The cooperative credit sector was also being revived through a Rs 13,000-crore package.
However, Singh raised the question whether farmers needed a lower rate of interest or reliable access to credit at reasonable rates.
He also raised similar questions on whether the existing institutional framework was adequate to meet the needs of the diverse lot of farmers and whether moneylenders needed to be brought under some form of regulation.