A Critical Look At Business Development

Problems in Goa.

Alexson Fernandes

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Goa’s industrial scene has been stagnant for some
time now, so much so that its not managed to
attract new investors or diversify. This can
attributed firstly to the government reforms that
constraint itself from growing, however this is an
internal problems that can be controlled to an
extent. What needs to be looked upon as a major
threat is worldwide recessionary trends that has
been a major fallout the emerging economic
decline to this state.

It has been known that although recession has hit

India and Goa in particular, manufacturing has
been affected worldwide, owing to changes in oil,
steel, labour and governmental fluctuations. This
has brought about a bad investment climate in Goa
in terms of new business coming in, there is also a
misconception that’s making rounds among the
business lobbyist that goan people oppose
everthing got to with setting up industries which is
most unlikely in other states.

There are many in Goa, particularly, the

industrialists and the bodies lobbying for industry
and trade, who attribute the gloomy industrial
situation to the growing activism, which has not
spared mega-projects like Special Economic Zones
(SEZ) and mining. Agitation against the SEZ in
some places showed signs of intermittent violence.
Several mega-housing projects have also been
grounded by villagers in different parts of the
State.

The blame in turn points to the prevailing

government for its failure to dispel the many
misconception among the public, well one could
also argue over the fact that people are not
opposed to everything, what they oppose is
massive industrialization at one go and that too
with complete disregard to supporting
infrastructure availability and lack of sensitivity to
demographic impact.

There is no denying the fact that the biggest

problem in Goa today is land availability. Goa is a
tiny State with not much land to spare. Nearly 40
lakh square metres of land is today locked into SEZ
projects which are freezed. With this, Goa
Industries Development Corporation, State
industry promotion body, is in no position to allot
land in prime industrial estates.

According to many in the industry, the

Government has failed to market Goa aggressively
unlike destinations like, say, Gujarat and Chennai.
With the demise of tax-related incentives regime,
Goa’s USP suffered in comparison to North Eastern
States among others, but the Government should
have been aggressive in promoting itself by
ushering in administrative reforms for speedy
clearances, promising smooth land availability and
developing desired infrastructure.

Another major problem that we can look at is lack

of electricity, the peak koad restrictions do not
allow running second or a third shift.

Much to the dismay of the industrial investor, Goa

lacked a credible industrial policy. The
industrialization of the State, which was driven by
a Central capital investment subsidy scheme of
good-old Union Territory days, continued much as
a haphazard activity. This invariably led to a huge
mismatch between the white-collar educated
employable labour force locally available and actual
need of the industry that was invited based on
extraneous considerations. Employment for the
locals was never made an issue. The seeds of
today’s socio-economic stress, emerging out of the
unprecedented inward migration, were sown in this
unplanned industrialization. 

As for the water demand, ‘as per conventional

norms, an average requirement of 45000 litres per
hectare per day for industrial use has been
assumed. The actual demand for the year 2001
was 58 MLD. Based on the above assumptions and
norms, it has been estimated that the unrestricted
industrial demand for the year 2011 is expected to
go up to 200 MLD. It advocated a public-private-
partnership to prop up the infrastructure and
utilities.

Gone are the days when this tourist paradise

doubled up as an equally enchanting industrial tax-
holiday hunter’s paradise. Today it is not. The
Government of the day needs to convince people
of its noble intensions before it charts out to
convince the investors that it means business.
There is no denying the fact that Goa at this
juncture needs industry which would be revenue-
generating for the State, eco-friendly to synergize
with tourism, less-land consuming and at the same
time one which caters to the job needs of the local
youth.
Environmental Concerns in Goa

Mining and its effects

The main problem of open cast iron ore mining in

Goa is the huge amount of overburden. For every
metric tone of Iron ore two metric tones of
overburden has to be removed. This has resulted
in accumulation of more than a billion tones of
overburden which is piled up in ‘dead’ and “active’
dumps. Mining also leads to change in topography
and land scenarios as we can evidently see in
places like Rivona , Bicholim, Quepem etc where
exhausted mines are just left unattedended. It
also leads to increased temperature in the mining
areas as well as dust pollution.
The environmental issues associated with
urbanization

Rapid urbanization is another issue which has

generated a lot of controversy in Goa because of
the large scale land conversions, lack of urban
amenities like sewage disposal systems, slums,
health problems, pollution, congestion, traffic
bottlenecks etc.

Business development and its impact on

land

The sight of agricultural lands being destroyed for

commercial purposes and construction of concrete
structures is quite rampant in the state. About
one-third of the total land in Goa falls under forest
areas and yields substantial profits. In recent
years, however, the pace of degradation has
almost doubled due to short-term planning, public
indifference, industrialization and rampant
urbanization. One of the other major reasons
affecting agricultural lands in Goa is mining. The
after effect of mining is siltation on agricultural
lands thus rendering them useless. There are cases
of mining siltation accumulating on agricultural
lands at Mayem village in Bicholim taluka for as
much as five metres high.

Industrialization and its impact.

Industrialization in Goa acclerated after the entry

of Ciba-Geigy’s santa Monica plant ( now
Syngenta) , Birla industries Zuari fertilizer plant,
and the Madras Rubber factory’s moulded Rubber
tyre manufacturing unit in the 70s. Many of these
estates are located in precious watersheds and cap
huge groundwater aquifers. This has resulted in
the depletion and pollution of the water resources.
The public opinion over polluting industry is so
strong in Goa that the politicians don’t fail to
assure that they would admit only non-polluting
industries in Goa. There have been a number of
controversies over power and water guzzling units
such as steel furnaces and metallurgical industries.
The people near Cuncolim industrial estate are
agitated over the metal recycling factories. There
are specific environmental issues near every
industrial estate. None of the industrial estates
have modern common effluent treatment plants.