| Summary: | Any consideration of planning in developing countries reveals discrepancies between plans and achievements. A study of the history of planning in Sudan has shown specific discrepancies and it has also been possible to determine the causes of these discrepancies and demonstrate that the planning methods used did not discourage these causes. The thesis argues that the three stages of planning process (forecasting, analysis and the formulation of an operational plan) should be separated and a suitable technique should be used in each stage. On the assumption that the forecasting and analytical stages have been done, that linear programming could be a highly suitable technique for the formulation stage. This thesis, therefore, concerns itself with the development of a linear programming approach to the formulation stage and with the testing of the suitability of this approach. Comments on other techniques for use at this stage are mentioned but those techniques were not tested by the author. The particular linear programming approach adopted is to adopt projects as the basic building blocks of the operational plan. Projects are related to resources and timed in relation to one another. It is argued that the objective function of the model should be the relaxation of these constraints which may limit growth in the future. Objectives that have been listed in previous plans are related to the objective function of the model. The model takes account of externalities and the planner's ranking of the importance of resources by tabling solutions derived from L.P.'s using coefficients which express planners' preferences. The solutions are used to seek a consensus plan. A hypothetical example is presented to demonstrate that the model works. Experiments were conducted using colleagues to take the parts of planners. These experiments showed the implications of using weighting functions to express the preferences of planners and the effect of externalities. The experiments demonstrated that one could reasonably expect to reach a plan which is feasible and which by consensus is desirable.
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