MARGAO
South Goa Planning and Development Authority’s wholesale fish market sopo collection is back in the news over the unending saga in the tendering the sopo collection fees in Goa’s lone wholesale fish market.
A bigger question, an intriguing one indeed, has come to haunt the SGPDA. Reason: Replies tabled on the floor of the House in the just concluded session of the Goa Legislative Assembly on the wholesale fish market sopo fee collection revenue has showed that the SGPDA’s coffers were enriched by Rs 3.64 crore for a period of two years and half, from January 2022 up to June 2024.
Figures dished out by the SGPDA may indeed sound strange, but for a different reason. For, the SGPDA had in August last year floated a e-tender for sopo collection at the wholesale fish market for a whopping Rs 3.88 crore a year, throwing up a moot question “ how come the SGPDA is looking forward to earn an annual revenue of Rs 3.88 crore from sopo bidders for a single financial year when the departmental collection of fees by the Planning body could fetch only Rs 3.64 crore revenue for two years and half.
Indeed questions are raised over the glaring mismatch between the sopo fees collected departmentally by the PDA and the projected revenue the Planning body is hoping to earn by allotting the work to private contractors via tender, throwing up further questions whether the PWD erred in the valuation of the estimated sopo collection fee revenue from the wholesale fish market or whether the PDA could not simply tap the revenue from the market departmentally.
SGPDA Chairman, MLA Krishna Daji Salkar contended that the PDA purely went with the PWD’s valuation of the projected revenue collection in the wholesale fish market before floating the e-tender. “Valuation of the projected revenue from the wholesale fish market by way of sopo collection fees was carried out by the PWD. Based on the PWD report, the PDA had floated the e-tender last year for Rs 3.88 crore”, Salkar said.
Given that Town and Country Planning Minister Vishwajit Rane announced on the floor of the House that the wholesale fish market sopo fee collection tender will be floated within two months, followed by similar assurance by the PDA Chairman last week, questions are further raised how the Planning body would go about now with the new tender “ whether it will float the e-tender based on the same old PWD valuation or take into account the average revenue collected by the PDA departmentally.
Monthly sopo fee
collection in 2.5 yrs
The SGPDA had in August last year floated a e-tender amounting to a whopping Rs 3.88 crore for sopo fee collection in the wholesale fish market. This implies that a successful bidder will be liable to pay to the Planning body an amount of Rs 32.36 lakhs every month.
A glance at the sopo fee collection carried out by the SGPDA departmentally, however, dish out a different picture. A close look at the month-wise details of revenue collected by the SGPDA from the wholesale fish market from the year 2020 till date shows that the PDA’s collection of the sopo fee collection departmentally that only on three occasion, i.e. in the three months of January-February-March 2022 that that the sopo fee collection had crossed Rs 17.76 lakh, Rs 15.60 lakh and Rs 15.99 lakh respectively. Again, the sopo fee collection had crossed Rs 13 lakh for the month of April in the year 2023.
Barring the fee collection in these four months, the monthly sopo collection fee by the SGPDA had never crossed the Rs 13 lakh mark in the last two years and half, again thrown up the question why the PDA could not collect Rs 32.36 revenue every month when the Planning body expected the bidders to pay the amount as per the e-tender.
