With an objective to create an institutional mechanism for fast-tracking stalled investment projects, both in the public and private sectors, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar launched Goa e-Suvidha portal, on Friday, 29th January 2015 an online mechanism to fast track approvals and resolve issues pertaining to infrastructure and other large projects. The mechanism has been developed by the cabinet secretariat Informatics division of National Informatics Centre. Goa is the 19th state to launch this portal.

Arun Goyal, Additional Secretary of a Project Monitoring Group, PMO, R K Srivastava (Chief Secretary, Goa),  Sharat Chouhan (Finance Secretary), Amey Abhyenkar (the Special budget Secretary), Dr. Shubhag Chand (HoD, Cabinet Secretariat) and  other officials were present for the function , held at Secretariat, Porvorim.

The mechanism aims at resolving a variety of issues with a view to fast-track the approvals for setting up and commissioning infrastructure and other mega projects, particularly stalled projects with targeted investment between Rs. 50-crore and Rs. 1000-crore.

“This system will not only encourage investment in the state, but will facilitate Goa Investment Promotion Board, besides make concerned departments accountable and answerable when there is objections from the locals to proposed projects,” Parsekar said.

Arun Goyal said that the system has been designed to enhance efficiency, bring transparency, boost the investor confidence, and eliminate the human interaction and improve the communication between the Industry and the Centre as well as state governments, adding that a project proponent in the process of setting up or implementing a project of an anticipated investment between Rs. 50 crore to Rs. 1000 crore and facing bottlenecks or apprehending delays in obtaining approvals form the public authorities can upload any project on the ‘Goa e-Suvidha’ portal and if the project cost is over Rs. 1000 crore, the issue can be uploaded on the central e-Suvidha portal.

According to him, once an investor uploads the issues requiring facilitation and support in their resolution and is accepted by the sponsoring department, the Chief Secretary or his designated senior officer of the state takes up the issues for resolution with the central government or through inter-departmental meeting in the state.

The user friendly portal allows submission of new projects, editing/updating the details of the projects, reviewing and monitoring of approval/clearances and issues pertaining to the project.

Goyal informed that the central e-Suvidha portal has been in use for more than two and half years and so far, more than 720 mega projects with anticipated investments of Rs. 30.20 lakh crore have been accepted for resolution in the central portal.

He further said, “The system has resolved around 1600 issues reported on its portal pertaining to 420 projects, besides 295 projects having 655 issues with anticipated investment of Rs. 12 lakh crore are currently under consideration.

More than 380 meetings convened with Union Ministries for resolving issues of the projects, besides 133 meeting convened with the Chief Secretaries of the states for speedy resolution of issues pending with state governments.”

Giving a brief presentation on the Goa-eSuvidha system, Shubhag Chand, Head of Department, Cabinet Secretariat, Information Division, said industry members can use the online solution for any bottleneck the industries are facing during the implementation stage, it would provide assistance in generation of MIS reports such as graphical reports, financial reports and tracking of actual investment for the projects entered in the system.

A news article published in the various news agencies i.e. The GOAN, The Navhind Times, The Business Line, Targetgoa.com, Digital Goa etc. dated 30th January 2016 on Goa-eSuvidha, an Online Projects Management System for Goa.