Working group to draw roadmap for UP’s growth
LUCKNOW: A working group comprising representatives of NITI Ayog and the state government has been constituted to draw a roadmap for state’s development and achieve a target of 10% growth rate. The group gets 15 days to draw the plan.
The announcement was made by chief minister Yogi Adityanath during an interaction with media persons after the day-long interaction between the 17-member NITI Ayog team led by its vice chairman Arvind Panagariya and the state government’s team led by the CM here on Wednesday.
The suggestion for setting up such a group had come from the NITI Ayog. This is the first visit of a high level team of NITI Ayog sent to any state at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s behest to work out a roadmap for development of Uttar Pradesh.
Besides NITI Ayog member Ramesh Chandra, CEO Amitabh Kant and advisor Alok Kumar, the working group would include UP minister Siddharth Nath Singh, chief secretary Rahul Bhatnagar and principal secretary planning Mukul Singhal. Chief minister said the state government had set a target of 10% growth rate against existing 7.9%. He, however, he did not elaborate on steps the state government proposed to mobilise additional resources.
The CM said a new industry policy would be formulated and tax reforms would be introduced besides cutting red tape and introducing single window system to boost industry. Yogi said the period of Bundelkhand package had ended and the NITI Ayog should therefore consider extending the package for the region’s development.
Pangariya lauded the Yogi government for the initiatives taken on various fronts and said the mood about the state had changed not only in India but also across the world.
He defended the state government’s decision for Rs 36000 crore loan waiver for farmers and said there was lot of stress on farmers.
“This is only one time decision and focus should be on the future steps that the state government is taking to take the state ahead,” he said.
“UP’s ranks would improve in respect to ease of doing business and the state would be made an investment friendly state,” said Pangariya.
He also briefed about different presentations that the NITI Ayog team made on transforming Uttar Pradesh and where does UP stand across sectors, agriculture growth, development for economic transformation, ease of doing business and start up programme etc.
The NITI Ayog’s presentations portrayed a dismal picture and ambitious targets are being set to bring about an improvement on various fronts. UP’s Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) that was 285 per lakh would be brought down to 70 by 2030. Ambitious targets are also being set to bring down Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) from 50 per thousand to 25 per thousand by 2030, said an official.