Rs 23 crore a month goes to service GIDC’s loan taken to buy back land
PANAJI
The State government is anxious to put up for sale a five-lakh square meter parcel of the nearly 23-lakh square meters of idle SEZ land to arrest the financial blood bath faced by the Goa Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) due to the interest and repayment of loan burden.
GIDC is shelling out approximately Rs 23 crore a month to pay back the principal and interest of the loan the State-owned corporation availed from the Oriental Bank of Commerce to cough up Rs 230-odd crores and get back possession of the nearly 23 lakh square meters from the five SEZ promoter companies.
Giving this information in a written reply to a query raised by Porvorim MLA Rohan Khaunte in the truncated budget session of the Goa legislative assembly abruptly adjourned on Tuesday, Industries Minister Vishwajit Rane said, a five-member ‘e-auction’ committee headed by the State’s Principal Secretary (Finance) is working on the proposal to sell the parcel of 5-lakh square meters of land.
Documents produced by Rane indicate that the committee has zeroed in on the National Informatics Centre (NIC) platform through which the e-auction of the land will be held.
The controversial SEZ projects were scrapped by the Digambar Kamat government after a statewide agitation in 2007-08 accusing the previous Pratapsing Rane-led Congress government of a massive scam in allocation of land to the SEZ promoter companies.
Rane and the then Industries Minister Luiziho Faleiro were also indicted by the Bombay High Court which had also directed that an FIR be lodged against the duo.
The issue dragged on after the SEZ promoter companies challenged the High Court order before the Supreme Court and in a dubious out-of-court deal, the late Manohar Parrikar-led government decided in 2018 to settle the issue by paying the original amount plus interest for all the years.
Eventually, GIDC ended up paying some Rs 230-odd crore to the five SEZ promoter companies with the interest component working out to approximately 100 per-cent of what the land was sold to the companies originally in 2007.
With no funds in its coffers, GIDC was forced to borrow from Oriental Bank of Commerce at commercial interest rates a whopping Rs 168 crore to pay the SEZ promoters and get back possession of the land.
