Goa asks mining industry to pitch in Rs.500 crore
By IANSThursday, March 25, 2010
PANAJI - After failing to implement a green cess on mining rejects proposed in the last budget, the Goa government Thursday proposed a mineral development fund (MDF), underwritten and developed by the state mining industry, which is worth approximately Rs.6,000 crore.
Chief Minister Digambar Kamat in his budget for 2009-10, had proposed a green cess of Rs.30 per tonne of mining ore reject (or extremely low grade ore, which cannot be exported) offloaded in open areas near mining pits. Kamat, also minister for mines, had said that the revenue generated from the green cess would be used for ‘land replenishment’ and ‘environment upgradation’.
Bowing to sustained pressure and criticism from the mining industry which exports 33 million tonnes of ore annually, Kamat was, however, unable to evolve a mechanism to implement the green cess.
Kamat Thursday in his budget speech said that the MDF was a part of the Congress-led state coalition government’s public-private partnership initiative for providing “infrastructure developmental solutions to the mining sector”.
“The government’s role as a facilitator shall be focused on statutory structuring and expediency of the same (MDF),” Kamat, who hold the finance ministry, said in his budget speech in the Goa legislative assembly Thursday.
About the broad framework of the MDF, Kamat said the capital and maintenance investment for the MDF would be exclusively “ensured, underwritten and developed by the (mining) industry”.
“The government envisages an investment of over Rs.500 crore which will be made by the mining industry over a five-year period,” Kamat said, adding that the money sourced from the mining industry would be used for maintaining infrastructure, roads and attending to environmental, social and health issues in Goa’s mining regions.
“If such initiatives are taken, the government can put the revenue from the mining royalty to other social projects; rather than infrastructure which the industry can easily expand, finance and sustain,” Kamat said, adding that the frame work for the MDF would be in place within the next few months.
