GOA

Based on the ‘s advice, the Goa State Environment Impact AssessmentAuthority(Goa-SEIAA) has revised and reduced the fee to be paid for environment clearances for operating a mineral beneficiation plant. The fee has been now brought down to half of what was originally planned to be charged or less.
In the beneficiation process,iron oreis separated from the rest of the mined extract. The state government is looking to restartminingactivities in the state after they shut down followingSupreme Courtdirectives in 2018.

For more than two lakh tonne, environment clearance for the mineral beneficiation plant would cost Rs 15 lakh, but has been brought down to just Rs 7 lakh.

As per the Goa-SEIAA’s recent decision, environment clearance fee for laterite quarries has also been slightly reduced from Rs 40,000 to Rs 35,000. In the case of basalt quarries, however, the amount has been hiked from Rs 50,000 to Rs 75,000.

To encourage innovation and product development, the is offering up to Rs15 lakhto Goan industries, hospitals and academic institutions topursueintellectual propertyrights(IPR). A task force will be formed to scrutinise and clear incentives under the scheme, which will remain effective till September 2022.

The scheme, called the financial incentives for certification andintellectualproperty rights reimbursement scheme, is part of the state incentives to encourage investments scheme, 2017 (umbrella scheme).

A similar scheme was notified in 2003 and 2017, but the department has amended the scheme as per changes introduced by the Centre.

The department will reimburse 100% of actual expenditure per certification up to Rs 8 lakh, while a cap of Rs 15 lakh has been fixed for IPR.

Goyche Fudle Pilge Khatir, an organisation committed to securing safety of Goas future generations, at an awareness meeting organised by it at Margao on Saturday over the draft amendments made to the Goa Land Development and Building Construction Regulations 2010, called upon the government to scrap the draft amendments to save Goa from imminent destruction.

The organisation expressed its determination to deploy all the legitimate and constitutional means to resist this massive onslaught on Goa and called upon the people to rise up in the defense of Goa.

To encourage Women to launch their own start-ups, the new policy provides special incentives to women entrepreneurs.

Tech bodies have been pushing the government to roll out the new policy ever since the existing policy lapsed in 2020.

TheGoa Startup Policy2017 lapsed in September 2020 and was given two six-month extensions as the government dragged its feet in rolling out the revamped policy. The Goa Startup Promotion Cell (SPC) began work on the new policy in the first half of 2020 by taking the learnings from the then prevailing startup policy and inputs from startups.

For the new startup policy a single round of discussions with local startups and startup ecosystem stakeholders was held, while inputs were also sought from the Centres department for promotion of and of industry and internal trade (DPIIT). Discussions between local stakeholders and the IT minister Jennifer Monserrate and chief minister Pramod Sawant, though scheduled often, were cancelled repeatedly.

The new policy aims at evangelising creation of at least 500 innovative, technology enabled products and building sustainable Services and solutions start-ups in Goa by providing requisite assistance and support in the next three years, targeting generation of EMPLOYMENT for at least 6,000 Goans.

The start-up policy also aims at developing technology and innovation hubs, centres of excellence, research and development labs and incubation centres in the next three years.
The revised policy also states that for start-ups hiring local talent, 50% salary of the freshers will be reimbursed subject to a cap of Rs 15,000 per month per recruit. Earlier, the limit was Rs 10,000.

State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) Goa has developed a new curriculum for computer Education under the CARES (Coding and Robotics Education in Schools) scheme and has decided to involve teachers in preparing the content.
GITP said that Goa lags behind in computer and information technology because of which Goan students are unable to enhance their capabilities and skills.

TheGoa BoardOf Secondary And Higher Secondary Education is in the process of converting all subject textbooks into the ePub format in association with the state commissioner for persons with disabilities.

Guruprasad Pawaskar, the state commissioner for persons with disabilities, urged the Goa Board to make available the textbooks in accessible format within six months.
Subhash Phaldesai, minister for social welfare, said education is the right of every student with disabilities, and appealed to all educational institutes to take extra steps to understand the obstacles facing these students and to strive to create an inclusive Learning Environment for them.

The ePUB plaftorm is an electronic publication, a file format that is the current standard in digital publishing. EPUBs are a standardised format that can support the digitisation of traditional print books and make the best use of the flexibility of digital screens to resize, reflow and enhance text and media rich content.

Goa Chamber of Commerce & (GCCI) has asked the State Government to consider extending the One Time Settlement scheme (OTS) for mining affected borrowers, which expired in March.

The GCCI, which met cooperation minister Govind Gaude on Friday said that Cooperative banks and societies should be included in the scheme.

Though the initial response was poor, the scheme helped 4,574 mining affected to settle their loans with Rs 98.6 crore disbursed through the Economic Development Corporation (EDC).

As per the debt relief scheme, a subsidy up to 35% on the total loan settlement amount was provided. Banks and financial institutions granted a waiver of 100% loan interest from September 2012, 40% waiver on principle loan amount for trucks owners and 30% to barge owners.

Tourism department will introduce a new heritage policy within the next few months to encourage owners of those houses to repair and convert their properties into tourist accommodations. Though there was a scheme which was notified several years ago, it was a failure, tourism minister Rohan Khaunte said.

Due to the certain Elements people were unable to take benefits of that scheme, he said. The tourism department will remove the hurdles and come up with a new policy, the minister said.

A lot of efforts have been put in the last one year to elevate Goa as a tourism destination and the results will be seen this year, though more needs to be done, he added.

While the hop on – hop off buses are ready to be launched, the tourism department is also looking at exploring and introducing new tourism Services.
Some of the services announced a few years, did not take off, but Khaunte said he has told an empowered committee to explore what kind of new services can be launched.

Five years ago, the tourism department launched an amphibian bus service vehicles that operate on land and sea to showcase back waters and interior parts of Goa. A service provider was selected, and two buses were procured, but the tourism department was not able to run the service due to lack of permission from the transport department.

PM Narendra Modi on Sunday lauded Goa for launching the solar rooftop online portal goasolar.in, developed by theGoa Energy Development Agency(GEDA), in collaboration with the department of new and and the electricity department.

Good step towards harnessing Solar Energy and furthering Sustainable Development, said the PM, sharing Goa chief minister Pramod Sawants tweet announcing the launch of the portal.

While announcing the new initiative, Sawant tweeted, The entire process of application, processing of application, installation of solar project, and the release of subsidy will be done online through the portal.

Goa University(GU) has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with theministry of foreign affairsof Brazil to promote thestudyof BrazilianPortugueselanguage and literature at the varsity.

As per the MoU signed through the consulate general of Brazil based in Mumbai, alecturerinBrazilianPortuguese language, with at least a postgraduate degree, will be appointed at GUs department of Portuguese and Lusophone studies. GU is already among the rare varsities in the country tooffera postgraduate programme in Portuguese, which attracts students from different parts of India.

Now an expert in Brazilian Portuguese language, literature, Brazilian culture and social studies will be based at university. The MoU will be for an initial period of two years, which may be extended later, and the areas of cooperation are also likely to be expanded in the future.