The 2012-13 Budget for the State is being prepared with a view to escalating the growth rate to double-digits, the Finance Minister, Mr K. M. Mani, has said.

Giving his introductory remarks during pre-Budget consultations with economists, developmental experts and academicians here on Tuesday, the Minister said the State has the potential to log this rate of growth.

It has already been averaging above-average when viewed from a national perspective and the 12th Plan target of 9.5 per cent is understating the potential, Mr Mani said.

Ideally, he would settle for a 10.5 per cent target for the emerging fiscal. He set great store by the growth rate in tertiary services, which has been exemplary till now, and which he wanted to further build on.

The Minister requested members of the invited audience to suggest ideas for formulating a developmental strategy for the State that would be capable of driving the projected growth in the ensuing years.

Since the Union Budget is being tentatively timed for March 16, it would not be advisable for the State to wait it out and opt for a latter date for its own.

Such a course of action would drastically cut down the ‘window' for going through the Constitutional requirement of passing the Budget in the State Assembly.

So it is likely that the State would choose to present its Budget during the first week of March ‘around the 9th,' the Minister said, adding that the date would be fixed only later.

Even as he sought to derive comfort from the exemplary growth achieved in the tertiary (services) sector, the Minister said that the primary sector lagged too far behind and had dragged down the growth rate along with it to much below the ideal and achievable double-digits.

Getting the pace right here would alone be sufficient to touch off incremental growth in the other sectors under what the Minister described as a cascading impact.

This needs tweaking of the entrepreneurial model in which households would convert themselves as centres micro businesses and seek to grow them through accelerated commercialisation, purposeful infusion of technology, suitable value-addition and result-oriented diversification.

All options with regard to deploying genetics, biotechnology and nanotechnology need to be exhausted, which need not be a tough proposition for a State with an army of educated unemployed.

One per cent of incremental growth achieved in the primary sector would set off about as much growth impulse in the economy as would three per cent in the secondary and tertiary sectors, the Finance Minister said.

The State and Central Governments are to be equally blamed for the plight of the farm sector. The developmental strategy for the State must constitute a credible plan of action to revive the moribund sector.

Employment generation must be the next theme that should exercise the minds of planners and policymakers, given that the State is home to 43 lakh educated unemployed.

>vinson@thehindu.co.in

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