the goan I network
PANAJI
Just about 1.73 of the 5.34 million tonnes of the iron ore put up for sale through an e-auction on Thursday-Friday by Department of Mines and Geology got picked up earning barely Rs 100 crore in revenues for the cash-starved State government.
A top official in the Mines Department said, Rs 100.25 crore was the total price quoted by multiple bidders who have picked up approximately 32 per-cent of the total 5.34 million tonnes of iron ore which was available at the e-auction.
Metal Scrap Trading
Corporation was the agency to which the e-auction process was outsourced and according to the data compiled by them, ore worth Rs 63 crores was bid for on Thursday.
A day later on Friday, firms from among the 13 registered for the e-auction bid for ore worth Rs 37-odd crores, the official said.
The cash-strapped State government was hopping to rake in roughly Rs 600-crore through the e-auction of the nearly 5.34 million tonnes of ore which was stacked at various locations in the former mining lease areas and at jetties.
Purity levels of the available iron ore merchandise ranged from 33 to 61 percent and the government had fixed a base price of Rs 400 per tonne. The iron ore was the last of several lots which the State government came to own after the Supreme Court had ruled that all mining since 2007 was illegal.
The Apex court also directed the State government to e-auction the ore and a percentage of the proceeds was to be paid back to the mining companies which had mined it as extraction costs.
Accordingly, part of the revenues earned through the Thursday-Friday e-auction will have to be shared with the mining firms which extracted it, leaving the government’s treasury with the balance much below Rs 100-crore.
