the goan I network
PANAJI
The Goa government is Rs 15511.52 crores in debt, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant who also holds the Finance portfolio said via a written reply in the Assembly on Tuesday. Sawant was replying to an unstarred question tabled by Canacona MLA Isidore Fernandes.
Sawant said that the state government’s Rs 15511.52 crore debt is as of the period ending June 30, 2019.
In the financial year 2019-20 itself, (upto June 2019), the state government has taken a loan of Rs 400 crores for market loans. It has not yet started re-paying this loan.
However, in this financial year, the government has started repaying some of the other loans.
Around Rs 44 crore has been paid back to the National Small Saving Fund, around Rs 29 crore has been paid back from the Central Loans taken, Rs 36 crore has been paid back to the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), and around Rs 1.6 crore has been repaid to the Power Finance Corporation (PFC).
No repayments have been made in this financial year to the National Co-operative Development Corporation (NCDC).
Over the past three years, i.e. from 2016, the government has taken loans for the purposes of the Goa Water Supply and Sewerage Project, the roads project, construction and upgradation of health centers, the Tillari Irrigation project, the construction of rural bridges, jetties at Malim and Cutbona, the Salaulim LIS Augmentation project, and the “development of the state”, Sawant’s reply lists.
Many of the loans taken have a floating rate of interest, whereas the loans taken from NABARD are at an interest rate of 4.75 to 6.25%.
Loans taken from the RBI for the “development of the state” have anywhere between a little less than
7% to a higher than 8% interest rate.
