New Delhi, May 5: India’s one of the most underdeveloped states, Odisha will get plan assistance of Rs 172.50 billion for fiscal 2012-13. The Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Chief Minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik finalized the Annual Plan on Friday.

Expressing satisfaction over the performance of the State, Ahluwalia said that appreciable progress has been reached during 11th plan in all sectors including agriculture. However, more intense efforts are needed to improve basic amenities and address the problem of adverse child sex ratio.

Maximum priority in the Annual Plan 2012-13 has been given to Energy (14.75%), followed by Irrigation (13.98%), Transport (10.94%), Education (10.67%) and Special Area Programmes (9.34%).

Odisha’s Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) growth for FY12 stood at 7.18%, which was marginally higher than country’s GDP growth rate of 6.88%. In a decade, since 2002-3, Odisha’s GSDP increased over three-fold to Rs 1375.85 billion in 2011-12, from Rs 450.47 billion in 2002-03.

The state’s industrial growth, after recording growth of 3.15% during 8th plan to 18.7% during 10th plan, declined to 9% during first four year of 11th plan.

Similarly, State’s services sector growth also increased from 4.59% in the 8th Plan to about 10% during the first four years of the 11th Plan. The agriculture sector growth also increased to 4.12% during 11th Plan period, from average of 3.5% during the 9th and 10th Plan.     

Chief Minister, Naveen Patnaik said, “Odisha aims to pursue the objective of having a growth rate in excess of 9% per annum during 12th Plan and more than 4% per annum in the agriculture and allied sectors.”

To achieve 12th Plan target the State has projected resource requirement of Rs 1 trillion.