From Our Correspondent
Agartala: After hectic parleys, the Planning Commission has finalized Tripura’s plan outlay for 2013-14 FY at Rs. 2500 crore even as the state had demanded Rs. 2850 crore.
The plan outlay has been fixed at a meeting between Deputy Chairperson of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Chief Minister Manik Sarkar held at Yajana Bhavan in Delhi on Wednesday.
Though the plan outlay has been hiked by 11 percent, the state government had demanded Rs. 2850 crore for 2013-14 FY to carry forward the development activities initiated by the state government.
In the discussion, Ahluwalia admitted Tripura has brought consistent progress in quality of life and income of people cutting across all sections of society and the process needs to be taken forward for improving socio-economic conditions of the people.
Ahluwalia praised Tripura for achieving satisfactory growth rate particularly in agriculture and services sectors during 11th plan period.
During the 11th Five Year plan period, the agriculture sector has shown a growth rate of 6.4 percent and 7.6 percent in the services sector. The 12th plan targets for these sectors would be 6 percent and 8.5 percent respectively, according to the Planning Commission.
Ahluwalia exhorted the state to adopt investment friendly policies aimed at encouraging private participation in both physical and social infrastructure development in the state. According to him, private participation was necessary to accelerate infrastructure development process.
Need to focus on health and education was also emphasised in the crucial meeting between Chief Minister and Ahluwalia.
He also sought suggestions from the state aimed at improving effectiveness of the central initiatives to ensure development process truly inclusive.
On his part, Chief Minister said top priority would be given to general economic services followed by social services and agriculture. He said efforts are on to create investor friendly environment and open up social sector for private investments in the landlocked Tripura.
