A TEN YEAR growth and development plan for the Eastern Cape is due to be implemented from 2004. According to Dr Mvuyo Tom, Director General of the Eastern Cape Provincial Government, the implementation of the plan will be through a partnership between government and business in the Eastern Cape had a joint responsibility in achieving growth in the province. the United Nations Development Programme and the British government will be assisting to ensure that the best practices are involved in order to have sustainable growth, he told a Port Elizabeth Regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Percci) breakfast. The primary goals of the plan are as follows: The systematic poverty eradication and incremental creation of fiscally sustainable social security system; The transformation of the agrarian economy and the establishment of food security; The consolidation, development and diversification of manufacturing base and tourism potential; and the development of Human Resources, Infrastructure, Public Sector and Institutional transformation. The plan aims to eradiate poverty, by improving the economic growth rate to between five and eight per cent; address the issue of unemployment, which has not improved regardless of the province’s growth rate; reduce by 80 the number of households living below the province’s baselines within the ten-year period of vision; reduce by 80 the people suffering from hunger by 2014; develop food self-sufficiency with particular emphasis in two of the district municipalities; increase the literacy rate by 50 per cent; reduce the gender disparity in the workplace; reduce by two thirds the infant and maternal mortality rate in the province by 2014; halt the spread of AIDS and Tuberculosis; and provide clean water for all by 2014 and eliminate sanitation problems by 2008. The implementation of the short term plans and programmes as well as the next steps to be taken are to be completed by the end of August 2003.