PANAJI, JAN 15: Chief Minister Luizinho Faleiro has urged the eleventh Finance Commission to provide a significant weightage to performance criteria and ensure that fiscally prudent states did not shoulder the burden of fiscally imprudent ones.Faleiro was speaking at a meeting with the 11th Finance Commission on a three-day visit to Goa to explore and understand the economy and for fixing the fund requirement for the state for the award period 2000 to 2005. The commission is headed by Prof A M Khusro. Deputy Chief Minister Dayanand G. Narvekar in charge of finance was also present at the meeting.The Chief Minister pleaded with the commission for devolution of share of Central taxes to the state government so that the state did not face financial crisis and managed the fiscal matters without any problems. The Chief Minister expressed Goa's strong reservations about the Gadgil-Mukherjee formula or any other formula giving 80-85 percent weightage to population criteria in determining horizontal allocationof Central funds to states.Commenting on the projections made for pre-devolution gap of Rs 2,130 crore, Faleiro said, it might appear to be conservative in the light of historical growth, in the matter of fact that given the small consumption base in the state, the growth in sales tax, he added, was reaching a plateau.
