PANAJI
The trend of Goans opting to by self-owned vehicles has been steadily declining for three consecutive years since April 2017, official records of the Regional Transport Office (RTO) indicate.
As on date, Goa has on its roads 14.86 lakh vehicles of which 10.53 lakh are two-wheelers and 3.42 lakh cars, including taxis. Around 85,000 trucks, buses and other six-wheelers ply on the roads.
However since 2017, there has been a steady annual decline in the number of Goans buying new vehicles, Transport Minister Mauvin Godinho revealed in a written reply to the Goa Legislative Assembly.
Godinho said, the State government collected Rs 218.16 crore in fees and taxes on registration of 85,453 new vehicles in 2017-18.
The following year in 2018-19, the number of Goans opting to buy new vehicles dropped by nearly 12 per cent with only 75,000-odd new vehicles bought and registered with the RTO. Revenue from registration fees and road taxes also declined significantly to Rs 201.36 crore.
Even Godinho's controversial incentive to auto dealers ostensibly to stimulate the industry by slashing road tax by 50 percent could not arrest the downtrend in purchase of new vehicles among Goans in 2019-20.
The transport minister told the Goa legislative assembly that the number of new vehicles bought and registered with the RTO dropped further to 70,226 and the revenue earned by the department plummeted to just Rs 172.03 crore in 2019-20.
Meanwhile, Goa has nearly 1.5 lakh registered vehicles that are over 15 years old according to the statistics submitted by Union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari to the Parliament last week.
Of the 1,50,206 vehicles which are over 15 years old, total 60,007 are over 20 years old and 90,199 are between 15 to 20 years old. The actual number is likely to be more since this number has been collated from the digitised vehicle data from the central vehicle registration database of Vahan 4.
The details of these vehicles become important in the light of the union government's announcement to mandatorily de-register old vehicles -- 15-years-old commercial and 20 -years-old personal vehicles -- if they fail to pass the fitness test from June 1, 2024.
In its bid to discourage people to hold on to their old vehicles, the government has started taking a series of steps including the move to formulate guidelines for imposition of "green tax" on older vehicles by states and UTs.
The road transport ministry has circulated the proposal to States and UTs for their comments.
