You must be aware that the Fourth Plan intended to finish industrial projects assumed in the Third Plan. It also targeted to increase capacities in export promotion and import substitution industries.
During the Fourth Plan, the real outlay on organised industry was of the order of Rs. 2,700 crore in the public sector. Hence, the financial investment was short of the targets set out in the Fourth Plan. Nearly three-fourths of the total investment was in the core sector, namely, iron and steel, fertilisers, non-ferrous metals, petroleum and petrochemicals, coal and iron ore.
The performance in industry was far short of even the modest targets set out in the Fourth Plan. On an average, the growth rate in industry was nearly 5 per cent which was much under targeted growth rate of 8 per cent envisioned in the Plan.
It is important for you to understand programmes of industrial development in the Fifth Plan were framed keeping in view the goals of self-reliance and growth with social justice.
The Plan proposed to lay stress on the following:
1. Quick growth of core sector industries by providing high priority to steel, mineral oils, non-ferrous metals, fertilisers, coal and machine building.
2. Development of industries which promise a quick diversification and growth of exports.
3. Enlarging the production of industries supplying mass consumption goods, namely, cloth, drugs, edible oils and vanaspati, sugar, bicycles.
4. Restraint on the production of unnecessary goods, except for exports.
5. Development of small industries by reserving 124 items especially for them and by starting an intensive programme for the development of ancillary industries as feeder industries to large-scale units.
Against the targeted annual growth rate of 8.1% in the industrial sector, the real annual industrial growth rate was of the order of 5.3 per cent during 1974-75 to 1977-78-much under the target.
