The Annual Plan for the year 2012-13 for the state of Goa was finalised here today at a meeting between Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Mr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Chief Minister of Goa, Sh. ManoharParrikar. The plan size has been agreed at Rs.4, 700crore.
In his comments on the plan performance of the State, Mr Ahluwalia said the State has been doing exceedingly well and achievements in all sectors of the economy are satisfactory. He said Goa is an economically developed progressive State and has great local advantage. He said the State needs to further encourage private participation in the development of both social and physical infrastructure.
Mr Ahluwalia said that the Commission is nearing completion of the 12th plan document and would shortly place it was formal approvals. He said sectors like health and education will have renewed thrust in the plan. The States should engage themselves in continuous evaluation of the major social sector programmes so as to help Commission in having a realistic assessment and opportunity for timely intervention wherever needed.
The State was also appreciated for achievement in the education sector. It was noticed that the literacy rate in the State has moved up from 82.01% in 2001 to 87.40% as per 2011 census. Male literacy increased from 88.4% in 2001 to 92.8% in 2011, while female literacy increased from 75.4% in 2001 to 81.8% in 2011. It is pertinent to note that the increase in the rate of growth of female literacy as compared to the pervious census is higher than their male counterpart, showing thereby that females are fast catching up with their male counterpart in the field of literacy.
GSDP of the State at constant prices has registered a compound annual growth rate of 10.65% during 2011-12, which is higher than the national growth rate of 6.88%. During the Eleventh Plan (2007-12) the average growth rate is 9.02%, which is marginally higher than the National average growth rate of 9% fixed by the Planning Commission for the Eleventh Five Year Plan period. However the State could not achieve their target growth rate of 12.1% determined for the Eleventh Plan period.
Mr. Parrikar said that the objective of the Twelfth Five Year Plan 2012-17 and Annual Plan 2012-13 is to achieve an ‘All Round Development of the State’ which would mean not only physical development like infrastructure but also human resource development in the true sense of the term. The major thrust areas will be Development of Agriculture and Allied Sector along with increased emphasis on the Development of infrastructure. The government would take new initiatives aimed at making the State the most ‘Investor friendly’ destination. Upliftment of the financially weaker sections would be on the priority list. It would also take necessary policy initiatives to ensure realization of full potential from Tourism industry. Focus would be on shifting from low-end tourism to high-end tourism during the 12th plan and for this purpose a new tourism policy is in the anvil.
He said the Government has approved an amount of Rs 26296.28 crore as projected outlay for the Twelfth Five Year Plan (at 2011-12 price) which is 209.91% higher than the projected outlay of Rs. 8585 crore (at 2006-07 price) for the Eleventh Five Year Plan of the State. The 15 per cent growth target set for the plan would be the highest attempted by any State.
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