This in reply to Message: 10, dated: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 from Philip Thomas Good analysis of income and expenditure of Goa - hope you will not be branded as pro-BJP!!
I say this because Gujarat Chief Minister at a public meeting said almost the same thing reciting what Gujarat contributes and what Gujarat get from Center. He is also on record that he does not need any funding from Central Government and that Gujarat can stand on it's own. Has any politician or for that matter any chief minister of Goa ever said this.no my dear . no. It requires guts and courage to say so. Okay by this very stand of C. M. of Gujarat.will our present C. M. of Goa will dare say this?? Of course after checking with what Philip Thomas wrote on prevailing economic figures quoted by him. Best regards, Dr. U. G. Barad *** Appending below message of Philip Thomas ********** Message: 10 Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:06:52 +0530 From: "Philip Thomas" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Goanet] Goa of Our Dreams: Living Within a China Wall (Arun Sinha) To: <goanet@lists.goanet.org> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" <For planning purposes, Goa does have to be viewed as an open system not as a hermetically closed one. For this it is necessary to draw up a statement of exchange transactions between Goa and the rest of the world (esp the Centre). A kind of Balance of Transactions. On the outgoing side you could have export receipts, tourism receipts, direct and indirect tax generation etc. On the incoming side the share of taxes, Finance and Planning Commission allocations, other budgetary allocations etc as well as things like energy supply and so on. It would clearly show whether Goa was dependent or a net contributor. If it is the latter then Goa would be within its rights to thump tables to get its fair share of commensurate benefits.>[Self] According to some newspaper reports, in 2006-07, Goa's Central Excise was Rs 725 crores; Customs Duty was Rs 522 crores; and Income Tax stood at Rs 1458 crores. The funds generated under these heads total approximately Rs 2700 crores. Goa's share in taxes was placed at Rs 300 crores. Central grants under Plan head was Rs 88 crores; Plan budget of the state is Rs 1500 crores of which half was in the form of loan which required onerous servicing. On the face of it, the gap between income and outgo is nearly Rs 1000 crores. The state's own tax collection (from CST, VAT, luxury tax, entry tax etc) is about Rs 1000 crores annually. (Goa charges a stiff 25% or more on aviation turbine fuel ATF a substantial source of funds given the exploding growth of traffic at Dabolim). Meanwhile, notionally, annual foreign exchange receipts from tourism add up to about Rs 1000 crores and from iron ore exports Rs 4600 crores (though this is not confirmed by the CSE report on mining elsewhere on goanet). Remittances from NRGs are unknown though India as a whole is a top recipient of foreign exchange under this head (of remittances). It is not known how the state can take credit for these amounts in an era of no foreign exchange shortages. But the effects of the first two on the environment are very real and the third may be too due to construction activities which tourism also contributes to. Lastly, Goa does not generate any electricity except in a marginal way. It has to depend on the national grid for its requirements of about 400 MW which may not be sufficient nowadays to the tune of about 50 MW. Though electricity is comparatively cheap (for consumers) the less said about its quality (due to poor T&D, theft etc) the better. We will pursue the "open systems" perspective on Goa (triggered by the Arun Sinha column) as and when more information becomes available.