PANAJI
Straddled by the burgeoning State debt conundrum due to the financial mayhem in the pandemic year, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant is spending these days leading to the Goa legislative assembly's budget session trying to confabulate with bureaucrats on how to reduce borrowings.
“Our efforts are towards revising and reducing loans and making every department self-sustaining,” Sawant asserted emerging out of a meeting with top finance department officials and key bureaucrats handling some of the administration's revenue spending and earning departments.
Goa's exponentially growing debt burden has been a matter of concern for several years ever since two of the State's major economic sectors - iron ore mining and tourism - have suffered severe setbacks.
Goa's total debt has now topped the Rs 19,000 crore mark. In the current financial year, marred as it was by the lockdown and the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, borrowings have crossed the earlier upper limits of 3.5 per-cent of the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) and is inching towards 5 per-cent.
Meanwhile, Sawant is pinning hopes of making the best of some Central infrastructure projects by getting some of the State-owned corporations like the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (GSIDC), Goa Tourism Development Corporation (GTDC) and the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) to negotiate and bid for projects outsourced by undertakings like defence and MPT.
"Projects of Central government undertakings in Goa like Railways, Navy, Goa Shipyard, MPT among others are outsourced to PSUs (Public Sector Undertakings) by the Centre. GSIDC being a Goa government's PSU can take up such projects,” Sawant said, adding that he has instructed officials of these corporations to work on it.
