Planned Development Process
Development Priorities Of The Tenth Plan

By Shiva Ram Neupane

THE country is now in the last year of the ninth five-year plan and is busy preparing the tenth plan. The history of planned development process began in 2013 B. S. with the launch of the first five-year plan. The total budget for this plan amounted to Rs. 3,300 million. The tenth plan will start from mid-July 2002 with the sole objective of poverty alleviation. Poverty alleviation has been the major objective since the seventh five-year plan. However, the problem of unemployment and underemployment has posed a great challenge to the country’s effort of poverty alleviation. In this context, the country needs to put in more effort to develop agriculture, tourism and other industries.

People’s participation will be the main tool for development in the tenth plan and the main target will be to bring down the percentage of population living below poverty line to 30 per cent. To fulfill this target, the plan will give a special emphasis on agriculture development, manpower development, development of tourism, communication technology, financial service and industry, generation of electricity and fuel, and infrastructure development will be the main development priorities in the tenth plan. The management of natural resources, village development, the development role of private sector in tourism, management of social service and population, consolidation of local organizations and communities, and good governance have been set aside as other areas of importance. These priorities are similar to those of the ninth plan but the tenth plan aims at adopting a new policy and implementation strategy.

Poverty and unemployment have remained as big challenges for the last ten years. The tenth plan targets to bring down the number of people living below the poverty line to 32 per cent from 42 per cent in the beginning of the ninth five-year plan. This figure is estimated to stand at 38 per cent at present. The major causes of poverty are unemployment, unproductive agriculture system, obsolete technology, lack of investment opportunity, lack of proper and safe market for national production, lack of direct and easy transportation to establish a link with the productive area and market, absence of trained and skilled manpower etc. To gain the expected achievement from efforts to reduce poverty, all kinds of development activities should be linked with issues of poverty alleviation and also effective programmes should be launched in the areas where the real poor people live.

Nepal as a landlocked agricultural country, agriculture remains the backbone of economic development in which the majority of country’s population is dependent. Still now this is the main employment sector in the rural areas and also major source of production to livelihood and income generation. Despite this, the development of this sector has not been as envisioned in the past plans and programmes. For sustainable economic change and employment generation agriculture development and its professional enhancement is very important in every region of the country. Mainly agriculture can play a significant role to improve the lives of the poor and uneducated families in the rural areas, so the plan should give top priority to modernise agriculture and increase productivity. Difficult geographical setting, dependence on monsoon, traditional farming, use of old and less productive tools, seeds, medicine and fertilizer, insufficient irrigation, lack of proper market, lack of easy and cheap transportation facility have been the main problems for the sustainable development of this sector. For modern and beneficial development of agriculture, the tenth plan should come up with solutions to these problems.

Tourism is next major sector for country’s economic and social development. Various kinds of natural scenes, high Himalayas, old and attractive temples, different kinds of living styles and interesting culture etc. are the factors for high probabilities of tourism development in the country. Also agriculture and cottage industry are benefiting from tourism. In view of income of foreign currency tourism industry has been playing a significant role for the last three decades. But the country could not achieve the expected targets, so the plan needs to explore ways to attract more tourists to the country every year and also lengthen their stay in Nepal. Different kinds of additional attractive cultural and recreational programmes are necessary and also new and village tourist destinations have to be developed. It is necessary to enhance transportation facility to other potential destinations. Pollution, lack of advertisement in the international market, lack of security, strikes, political and social crises, lack of sufficient and reliable air service for international tourists are the present challenges facing tourism development. The plan should look for ways to overcome these problems.

Nowadays the cottage and small industries are in a poor state, many of them have shut down. For employment and income generation cottage and small industries have been playing a significant role. But for the last few years, they have been facing a host of problems in production and marketing. It is a daunting task to prevent these industries from being closed. Favourable government policy, easy import of raw materials and proper and safe market for production is a good way for smoothly running industries. Our national policy should be concerned to protect new industries. Furthermore it is necessary to promote industrial develop-ment of the country by producing quality goods, production of raw materials in domestic market, raising industrial productivity and enhancing competiti-veness in the global market. Besides this, to attract private and foreign investment the industrual policy should be made more flexible.

The road transport is an important infrastructure for the overall development of the country. For the development of agriculture, tourism, industry, easy and cheap transport facilities should go together. So for the development of transport facilities it should be a main component of every development programmes and activities. Also transport, mainly road transport, must be extended to all the districts. It is very crucial to develop road transport to achieve the national objective of poverty alleviation.

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