[1] When utilizing indicative planning, the state employs "influence, subsidies, grants, and taxes [to affect the economy], but does not compel".
Indicative planning originated in France after the Second World War by Charles de Gaulle in 1946 to strengthen the French economy and offset the demands of socialists and Communists calling for socialization of the means of production and/or Stalinist command planning.
The underlying concept behind indicative planning is the early identification of oversupply, bottlenecks and shortages so that state investment behavior can be modified in a timely fashion to reduce the incidence of market disequilibrium, with the goal being a concerted economy.
[6] Alexei Kosygin's 1965 Soviet economic reform tried to introduce some sort of indicative planning in the USSR.
In the latter part of the 20th century and till date, economists have demanded that underdeveloped and developing countries — especially in continents like Africa — should embrace National Economic Planning to a large extent [5][6].