With five-year plans behind us, the first draft of the government’s 15-year vision document with a seven-year strategy and three-year action plan to steer the economy would be ready by February, NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya said on Wednesday.
“Even though there is not much time to prepare the three sets of documents, we hope the first draft would be ready before the next Budget,” Panagariya said.
The government would incorporate part of the three-year action plan in the FY18 Budget itself, which would be first year of the action plan.
Among others, the documents would talk of likely GDP growth scenario, investments, architecture of social sector development and transfer of central funds under centrally sponsored schemes, he added.
After the Narendra Modi government came to power in 2014, it abolished the erstwhile Planning Commission. The Aayog took its place as a think-tank. The government also declared that the current 12th Plan, which concludes in FY17, is the last such five-year plan.
To guide the economy, it has tasked the Aayog to prepare a 15-year perspective plan, which will be linked to the long-term social and sustainable development goals. To convert the longer vision into implementable policy and action, a seven-year strategy from 2017-18 would be formulated as part of the national development agenda. Further, a three-year framework from 2017-18 to 2019-20 will be aligned to predictability of financial resources.
Panagariya said the Aayog will present the appraisal report of the first four years of the 12th Five Year Plan to its governing council next month.
The appraisal will be broadly on nine categories, including the economy and policy, macroeconomic factors, agriculture and rural transformation, and employment and skill development.
The 12th Plan had envisaged three scenarios termed “strong inclusive growth”, “insufficient action” and “policy logjam”, pegging the average annual GDP growth rate under the three scenarios at 8%, 6-6.5% and 5-5.5%, respectively.
Going by the old GDP series, the economy performed worse than the “logjam” scenario in FY13 and FY14 (below 5%), before recovering in the subsequent years.
