The machinery of planning :political, administrative and financial aspects

Abstract

Planning in the contemporary sense is a vast governmental operation with political, administrative and financial implications deriving from its overall objective, namely the improvement of the economic and social conditions of the people of a country. These implications are as far-reaching as those involved in the political and constitutional changes preceding the independence e of the newly independent countries of Africa and other parts of the world. For purposes of planning, however, much more than taking over existing governmental machinery is involved. A reorganization of government as well as the establishment of economic and social goals is called for. The goals may be easy to define and establish, but the reorganization required to establish the machinery for achieving them takes a considerable amount of political energy, courage and foresight such as is seldom imagined or easy to achieve. For, in the first place, economic and social planning requires new machinery to be grafted on to the existing political, administrative and financial machinery.