Andhra Pradesh

Bumper plan outlay for A.P.

NEW DELHI: The Planning Commission on Monday approved the large 2008-09 annual plan outlay of Rs. 44,000 crore for Congress-ruled Andhra Pradesh for implementing various development programmes. The outlay, which includes additional Central assistance of Rs. 165 crore for projects of special interest to the State, is 46 per cent higher than the last year.

The announcement about the finalisation of the outlay followed a two-hour-long meeting that Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy had with Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia at Yojana Bhavan here this afternoon.

“We agreed to a plan of Rs. 44,000 crore which is actually 46 per cent increase over the previous year. This is a very big increase,” Mr. Ahluwalia said after the meeting.

Top Andhra Pradesh government officials claimed that this increase is the highest for any State in the country. The Deputy Chairman said the State has done “extremely well” in many areas of public-private partnership. He acknowledged that the State is doing well in all sectors of the economy and appreciated the efforts for encouraging private sector participation in social sectors, including education and health. Commending the State for its plan performance, he said the State has set a target of 9.5 per cent for the 11th Plan period and “in the first year more than 10 per cent has been (achieved).”

During the ninth plan, he noted that the State’s performance was 5.4 per cent while it increased to 7.4 per cent in the next. “Plan expenditure (of Andhra Pradesh) is probably the best among the States in the country in terms of increasing expenditure and implementing, specially the amount of work done in rural development and irrigation,” he said, adding that the State is (doing) extremely well in the last three years and this thrust must continue in the years to come.

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