It is usually seen that the governments encourage disinvestment of state assets and do not indulge in buying private stakes in companies. But, the Naveen Patnaik led Odisha government has decided to do exactly the opposite. It has decided to buy 49 per cent stake held by the United States based company AES Corporation in Odisha Power Generation Corporation Ltd (OPGC) for about Rs 1,000 crores at a time when the state’s financials are in doldrums.
The goods and services tax (GST) collection in Odisha has fallen by 7.86 per cent year-on-year to Rs 2,694 crore in June 2020, amid slowdown in the economy due to the coronavirus crisis. The GST revenue was Rs 2,923 crore in the year-ago month.
