Goa govt will borrow less in next fiscal: Sawant

Claiming that his governmentensured fiscal management even during the COVID-19 pandemic,Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Thursday said the statewill borrow even less in the next financial year.

The government has started an exercise to tap Centralschemes to decrease its dependence on borrowings, he said.

Sawant was responding to questions on fiscalresponsibility raised by the opposition during a vote onSupplementary Demands for Grants for 2020-21.

Countering the opposition's claim that the governmenttook huge loans, the chief minister said as per the datareleased by the Reserve Bank of India, ''Goa is a state whichborrows minimum.'' ''We borrow even less than Mizoram,'' Sawant added.

His government borrowed Rs 2,400 crore in the currentfiscal and would borrow less in the next FY, he said.

The state government has already started revising someloans, swapping them with borrowings with lower interest rate,he said.

Some state government departments have failed tosubmit Utilization Certificates for the funds procured fromthe Centre for as much as ten years, he said.

''We have started clearing this backlog, which will becompleted by March 31,'' Sawant told the House.

Informing that the state government is restructuringsome loans, Sawant said that a loan from LIC with interestrate of 13 per cent has been repaid.

''The loan taken in the year 2008 from the PowerFinance Corporation was also repaid,'' he said.

The state will swap the loans to NABARD which providesfunding at a lower 2.5 per cent rate, he added.