a) Objectives:

• Increase food production,
• Promote the welfare of the people by securing and protecting a just social order,
• Provide equal opportunity and facility for all citizens to develop their personality and
• To make economic progress.
• Provide reasonable and adequate means of livelihood for all citizens and
• Regulate the ownership and control of the resources of the country and protection and encouragement to private sector in the allocated sectors of industry and trade.

b) Targets:

• The plan had set an overall target of increasing the national income by 19 per cent (3.8% per year);
• per capita real income by 9 per cent (1.8% per year) to keep pace with the expected population growth rate of 2 per cent per year;
• increase food grain production by 15 per cent (3.0% per year) and
• cash crop production by 73 per cent (14.6% per year).

c) Priority

• topmost priority to transportation and communication sector.
• Agriculture, forestry and irrigation were given second priority and
• industry and the social services were given third and fourth priority, respectively

d) Financing

• The total outlay of this plan was Rs. 2500.00 million. of which the public sector received Rs. 1740.00 million., private sector received Rs. 520 million and Panchayat sector received Rs. 240.0 million.

e) Achievements

• The actual government development expenditures amounted to Rs. 1724.0 million compared with the planned outlay of Rs. 1740.0 million.
• GDP was increased by only 2.7 (Agricultural Sector 2.9% and Non-agriculture Sector 2.4%) per cent per year as against the target of 3.8 per cent per year because of shortfall in the production of both agricultural and industrial sector.
• The production of food grain increased by only 12.4 per cent and cash crops by 39 per cent over the period of five year, which was very less than the target.

Table: Third Plan: Targets and Achievements in Agriculture

Source: Lohani

f) Obstacles/Problems

• Shortage of well-prepared projects, as previous plans,
• Difficulties in timely procurement of various inputs,
• Administrative machinery was still not well trained to the development needs to the country,
• Rise in general price index by 15 per cent.