112 PONTIFICIAE ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARVM SCRIPTA VARIA - 28 In consequence, great difficulties began to be experienced from the early years of the First Plan. Practically all the estim- ates for investments had been made in purely financial terms and a sizable increase in investments had been approved purely on a financial basis. As soon as the investment projects began to be implemented, there was a sharp and continuing increase in the requirements of steel and other goods and services. Very soon the demand for cement increased to nearly three times the domestic supply. There was also a continuing and large expenditure of foreign currency for the import of steel, which added up to something like 2,000 million dollars in the next ten years or so. In 1050 it would have been possible to establish a new million ton steel plant with perhaps about 150 million dollars of imported machinery. Had this project deen started at that time an additional supply of one million ton of steel (worth more than one hundred million dollars per year) would have been available from the early years of the Second Fide Year Plan, and would have resulted in a very large and continuing saving of foreign exchange. The deci- sion to drop the million ton steel project from the First Plan was due to attention being focussed only on the current demand in 1949, that is, due to a complete failure to appreciate the need of looking ahead to get ready to meet the demand for steel which was certain to increase rapidly in future. Targets of steel in 1970: At heavy cost we had learnt the lesson of not proceeding with the building up of capacity for steel production 12 or 15 years ago. Much attention is now oeing given to advance planning for steel. A detailed analysis of the requirements of steel is made, where possible, by indi- vidual items of production. With a given set of production targets for, say, 1970, it is possible in this way to prepare useful estimates of the requireménts of steel. Some illustrative figures for the transport equipment industry is given in the following table. ‘151 Mahalanobis I] - pag: 10