Goa: Rs 800 cr loss due to mining closure
Panaji, Feb 26 : Reeling under economic woes since the halt in mining activity, Goa is expected to defer some of its expenditures in the coming financial year.
Chief Secretary B Vijayan on Tuesday said the shortfall in revenue collection from the mining sector is the cause for deferring some of the expenditures.
Addressing a day long state credit seminar organized by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), he said the targeted revenue collection was estimated to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore in the form of royalty collection but the government could fetched only Rs 350 crore so far.
The state treasury, he added, faced Rs 800 crores loss due to mining closure.
The bureaucrat's remark comes six days after Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar assured the state that the forthcoming budget would be balanced even though the state is witnessing financial constraints due to mining crisis.
"We are going through a hard phase. We have taken a big hit after the closure of mining activity...We are also witnessing the spread effect of the mining closure in the form of lesser Value Added Tax (VAT) collections," Vijayan said.
Regardless of these problems, he said that the government has succeeded to curtail wasteful expenditures while some are postponed for the next fiscal year.
Meanwhile, the government had to face embarrassment when a senior Reserve Bank officer pointed out the failure of the banks in Goa in financially assisting the fish vendors, who are being exploited by the unorganized money lenders in Tamil Nadu
RBI Regional Director J B Bhoria said the middlemen from Tamil Nadu giving credits to the fish vendors in Goa indicated utter failure of bankers in the state.