Page 39 - DMGT401Business Environment

Business Environment

Notes with stable prices; ensuring food and nutritional security for all, particularly the vulnerable
sections of society; providing the basic minimum services of safe drinking water, primary
health care facilities, universal primary education, shelter, and connectivity to all in a
time bound manner; containing the growth rate of population; ensuring environmental
sustainability of the development process through social mobilisation and participation
of people at all levels; empowerment of women and socially disadvantaged groups such
as Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes and Minorities as agents
of socio-economic change and development; promoting and developing people's
participatory bodies like Panchayat Raj institutions, co-operatives and self-help groups;
and strengthening efforts to build self-reliance. These very priorities constitute the
objectives of the Ninth Plan.
10. Tenth Five Year Plan was only the first phase of the ten-year road map. It was felt that the
Prime Minister's vision could be realised through targeting a growth rate of 8% during
the Tenth Plan period and 9.3 % during the Eleventh Plan, and by focusing attention on the
growth of employment intensive sectors.
Tenth plan aims at an indicative growth of 8% in GDP. For the period of 2002-2007 economic
growth is not the only objective of national planning. Over the years, development
objectives are being defined not just in terms of increases in GDP or per capita income but
more broadly, in terms of enhancement of human well being.
11. Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-2012) India's centralized planning process is governed by
seven cardinal policy objectives: growth; social justice & equity; modernization; self-
reliance; food; productivity and employment. These would continue to be the guiding
principles for the Eleventh Plan (2007-12) which commences from 1st April, 2007.
A very large part of our planning is concerned with fiscal aspects and physical targets. It
must, however, be recognized that it is the human and natural resources, scientific methods
and technologies which are the fundamental elements in the creation of wealth for higher
productivity, increased efficiency and completely new ways of doing things. The Eleventh
Plan, therefore, would place emphasis on these components which have received inadequate
attention in the past. Eleventh Plan would be the vehicle that would position the country
to be a super power- economically, strategically and scientifically. For the Eleventh Five
Year Plan the Government of India is envisaging the economy to grow at an annual
growth rate of 8.5%%. This implies that Agricultural Sector will have to grow at a rate of
3.9%, industry at 9.9%, services at 9.4%, and exports at 16.%, while keeping the imports at
a level of 12.1%. The implicit growth of manufacturing sector which is a subset of industry
is targeted for 12%. The above growth rates interwoven with each other, of course, would
depend upon many factors. Some of these factors are internal to the Indian economy and
some are influenced by the external environment. The growth in the agricultural
productivity can be sustained on a long term basis only through continuous technological
progress and this calls for well structured strategies for research & development. Industrial
sector has gained a lot over the past decade or so due to liberalization and is gradually
integrating with the world economy. Some of the sub-sectors like automobiles,
pharmaceuticals, biotechnology products, speciality chemicals, textiles have acquired
unprecedented level of global competitiveness and need to be supported to maintain the
present edge. The Eleventh Plan is also placing special emphasis on infrastructure and
skill development, the two crucial and critical catalysts for growth.
The services sector is currently the fastest growing sector of economy accounting for
about 54% of GDP. It is estimated that this sector has the potential for creating 40 millions
jobs and generating additional $ 200 billion annual income by 2020. In the Eleventh Plan,
the government is placing special focus on this sector so that its potential to create
employment as growth parameter is fully realised.

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