PANJIM: Governor Mridula Sinha in her short address to the Goa Legislative Assembly painted a rosy picture of the government’s achievements while leaving aside several burning issues.
The Governor’s speech harped on issues like Mopa, agriculture and several others but failed to address any issues concerning the Goans, completely leaving out the Regional Plan and the Medium of Instruction (see report on pg 2).
Linking the proposed Greenfield airport at Mopa to the tourism industry, Sinha said the project will be commissioned in 2019 with the construction of first phase expected to begin in September 2016.
Addressing the session on the first day on Monday, Sinha said the new airport will ease congestion at the existing one at Dabolim.
“Tourism is the backbone of Goa economy. The tourist arrival is more than three-folds of the Goan population. In order to provide better infrastructure and attract more and more quality tourists, domestic as well as foreign, and also to avoid congestion at Dabolim airport, a Greenfield airport at Mopa has been proposed,” she said.
“The cabinet has approved the Request for Proposal. The construction work is expected to start by September 2016. The actual construction of first phase of the project will take 36 months and project is likely to be commissioned in 2019,” she said in her speech.
Referring to iron ore mining in the State, she said mining operations resumed in September 2015 with 14 e-auctions held till date. “Differential global positioning system survey of 85 mining leases is completed till date with its authentication plans. Total 14 e-auctions were held in which 86,11,783 metric tons of iron or was put up for bidding that realized a sale value of Rs 831.15 crore. Out of sale value realized, the State received royalty and processing fees of Rs 110.62 crore,” she said.
She also said that the State has earned royalty amounting to Rs 4.91 crore on account of production of iron ore and bauxite. “Between April 2015 to December 2015, 750 transit pass books were issued for transportation of minor minerals and an amount of Rs 1.02 crore was received towards the royalty,” she added.
“The other significant steps taken by the government towards resumption of mining activity in the State included revocation of environmental clearances suspended by Government of India, air and water clearances, reduction of export duty on low grade ore from 30 percent to 10 percent by central government, extensive use of ICT to dispense with irregularities/illegalities and under mining through use of e-challans for payment of royalty, online sale, export/transit permits; and vehicle tracking machines,” she said.
The Governor also highlighted the ‘Umbrella Scheme’ giving financial relief to truck owners engaged in mining operations stating that a financial relief of Rs 8.27 crore has been disbursed to 1,799 beneficiaries from April-December 2015. While under the ‘Debt relief scheme for mining affected borrowers of financial institutions’ an amount of Rs 8.64 crore has been distributed to 1,157 beneficiaries during the same period.
She said that neglecting agriculture owing to flourishing tourism sector is a matter of concern but added that the Laxmikant Parsekar-government had raised agriculture growth to 4.51 percent in 2013-14 which was -3.84 in the preceding financial year, through various schemes and subsidies.
