Every year the State gives its annual financial statement and budget is presented in the legislative assembly by the finance minister with government’s vision and focus areas for development in the forthcoming financial year. This year the budget session will begin on February 19 and the statement of accounts, that is the budget, will be presented on February 22 before the State assembly by the Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar who is also the finance minister of Goa.
With expectations on transparency growing in this digital era, it would have been better if the action taken report (ATR) is presented prior to the budget session so that people would know what was achieved during the year and what was left in balance.
According to industry bodies in the State, it is expected that employment generation through development works should be the prime objective of any government.
“Goa and Goans need more white collar jobs as the literacy rate as well as educational qualifications is high. We therefore feel that two sectors which can ensure this are tourism and logistics. Goa is blessed with port, airport, railways and road network. Mopa airport will be shortly operational. Looking forward to the government developing logistic areas and infrastructure required for it. Coupled with it, the state can also be promoted as financial hub, by inviting the major financial institutions, who are planning to shift from the metro cities due to congestion there,” said Manguirish Pai Raiker, chairman, National Council for MSME.
He added that even though agriculture in the State is currently on an upswing, a little more boost will help to motivate the farmer and increasing the yield. Since mining is not showing much progress due to international conditions, stress needs to be laid on other sectors which will help in bringing investments and help in job creations and also increase the government revenue. Infrastructure development would be the key for bringing in industry and service sector. Improvement in water and electricity distribution system should be taken up on priority.
“Goa is an international destination. The infrastructure and services should complement it. Government should focus budget expenditure in building and improving the current infrastructure comparable with the best in the world,” added Mr Raiker.
World Trade Centre, Goa chapter also received representations from its members. Many of them laid stress on to give a boost to manufacturing sector. “We would like to see Goa gaining ground as a quality component manufacturing destination.
Hence, incentives for the industry engaged in manufacturing, is required. We would like to see an increase in allocation in education, especially in vocational training and skill development to enable churn out a sustained quality of workforce to effectively feed the component manufacturing sector,” said a member of the WTC, Goa.
“E-commerce is an area where Goa could gain tremendously by being a hub for the logistics industry. This budget could make suitable allocation for encouraging the setting up of logistics parks to boost investment and employment in the state. Similarly, Goa is one of the most favoured tourist destinations in India and suitable incentives for setting up MICE related infrastructure in the state are needed,” said Cyril De Souza, assistant director, trade promotion of WTC, Goa.
Information technology is another area where Goa is showing promise to move northwards. The last year budget also laid much importance in improving this sector by allocating budgetary provision of nearly Rs 21 crore. There are nearly 220 start-ups in Goa which are heavily banking on state govt initiatives.
“Now that the Goa government is aware of the size of the ecosystem and approximate numbers of IT start-ups and industry, we expect that this time there will be much bigger budget planned for the industry. We expect the monetary benefits to start flowing as soon as the policy is released and the implementation is done. It will be beneficial to have transparency on the budget allocation and subsequent utilisation,” said the president of Goa Technology Association (GTA), Mangirish Salelkar.
