Day: June 7, 2012

Manipur Information Centre
New Delhi, June 6: The Annual Plan for Manipur for the year 2012-13 was finalized at Rs.3, 500 crore at a meeting held at Yojana Bhavan here today between Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Chief Minister of Manipur, Okram Ibobi Singh.
In his comments on the performance of the State, Montek Singh Ahluwalia said the State had been performing satisfactorily. He suggested that the infrastructure gap in the State needed to be bridged on priority. The State should encourage private participation in infrastructure development. He said the GSDP at current prices of the State had increased from Rs.5,133.66 crore in 2004-05 to Rs.7,184.09 crore in 2010-11.
Recent analysis revealed differing levels of growth rate of different sectors of the Economy, during the period 2000-2009. Of the sectors considered, electricity, gas and water supply and public administration were found to have grown slowly. Fishery, Manufacturing with its sub-sector Unregistered manufacturing and Transport, storage & communication with its sub-sector communication had grown faster.
Education and Health indices threw up a mix of the good and not so good. Literacy rate, standing at 70.50% in 2001 had improved significantly to 79.85% in 2011. Overall, in Male literacy rate had increased by about 6% to 80.33% in 2011 while female rate had gone up by 12.64% from 60.53% during the same period. Health indicators are good with Crude Birth Rate (CBR) and Crude Death Rate (CDR) estimated at 14.9 and 4.2 respectively as against 22.1 and 7.2 respectively at All-India average (SRS-2010), and Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) of 14 per thousand at (SRS-2010) as against 47 at All-India average.
The State Government had identified particular sectors for faster growth of economy and provision of services. Those were: of providing better road connectivity improving availability of power and drinking water; expanding the network of health care facilities, and better schools throughout the State. Other focus areas included irrigation facilities and youth development through promotion of sports.
Briefing the Commission on the development strategy of the State, the Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh said that the main thrust would be on reducing Infrastructural deficit and expanding and strengthening capacity of key social sectors – Health, education, women and child welfare, nutrition and food security.
He said there was a need for closing the gap between the deprived local population and the rest of the country. He emphasized enough investment for expansion of social infrastructure for covering the disadvantaged section, backward, remote and border areas.
He said skill development programmes would be expanded to meet growing demand of industry and service sectors. He said greater powers would be devolved to the hill areas and new policy initiatives will be taken to encourage investments in these areas.

Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/manipur-annual-plan-2012-13-finalized-at-rs-3-500-crore/