In recent years, Odisha has achieved economic growth ranging from 8 per cent to 9 per cent. The economy of the State has the potential for growth of up to 10 per cent in the coming years,” said Jugal Kishore Mohapatra at the fist All Secretaries’ Meet he chaired after becoming the Chief Secretary on Wednesday.
Mohapatra exhibited his trust in the strength of the State’s economy. Discussions at the meeting revealed that for a small-sized economy like Odisha, it is not phenomenal to achieve economic growth rate of 8 per cent to 9 per cent. It still has a potential for a higher rate of growth up to 10 per cent.
However, despite the pervasive impact of global recession and declining trend of national economic growth rate, the Chief Secretary’s estimation of the economy of the State appears outlandish. “Even at present, the State has the fiscal ability to enhance investment in public infrastructure by up to 5 per cent,” Mohapatra observed.
He emphasised on creation and appropriate management of infrastructure. For enhancing Government investment in infrastructure development, he asked the Secretaries to evolve a robust mechanism for creation and maintenance of infrastructure facilities.
Outlining the focus areas for prioritisation by the concerned departments, he urged the Secretaries and Special Secretaries to optimise team efforts in implementation of projects and overcome the constraints in the process.
The focus areas identified by Mohapatra include creative solution for augmenting service delivery at the grassroots level, recruitment of personnel in key posts at field positions, stepping up public investment in infrastructure, qualitative improvement in higher education, distributional reforms and qualitative management in the power sector, strengthening of the public health system, promotion of agri business, mainstreaming of tribal and socially vulnerable groups, land acquisition for developmental projects, expeditious disposal of rehabilitation issues, regulatory clearances for different projects and raw material linkage for stalled projects.
The Chief Secretary also highlighted the medium infrastructural priority areas, which include State Highways development projects covering double-laning of 2,000 km, creation of irrigation facilities for six lakh hectares of land, completion of 600 rural bridges, completion of 15,000 km of PMGSY roads, establishment of two super critical power projects, installation of 520 power stations with 33/11 KV capacity, facilitation of National Highway projects, creation of at least two ports, expediting railways projects like Angul-Sukinda, Hadidaspur-Paradip and Khurda- Balangir rail lines.
Besides, Mohapatra asked the Parliamentary Affairs Department to upload Cabinet decisions on the Government website and advised Secretaries to implement all decisions.
“Team efforts should be optimised and service delivery ensured at the grassroots level,” he advised.
Besides, he asked the Secretaries to draw a list of at least three to five priority areas, which they can boost in their respective departments.
New Development Commissioner Injeti Srinivas informed that a project monitoring system has been initiated in the Planning & Coordination Department for tracking and monitoring various projects.
New Additional Chief Secretary of Finance Department UN Behera asked the Secretaries to submit their proposals for the 14th Finance Commission Report within 15 days.