Shillong, June 4: The state cabinet on Wednesday approved the proposal for implementation of the 80 million dollar Integrated Eco-Tourism Sustainable Agri-based Livelihood Development Project funded under the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Informing this after meeting, chief minister Conrad K Sangma said, “This is an externally aided project. This project was initially 145 million dollar project but we have now scaled it down based on government of India’s proposal to put a ceiling on different externally aided projects, which can be availed by the state, we had to bring it down from 145 million dollar to about 80 million dollars.”
“This is being done because government of India is the authority that we pay back 80% of the loan on behalf of the states in the NE and hill states and therefore, government of India felt that the states would take the money but they have to repay it back and hence they has decided to put a ceiling. Meghalaya has taken Rs 12,000 crore and after that almost close to Rs 9,000 crore has to be repaid back by government of India. Keeping that in mind, we had to scale it down,” he also said adding, “This project which has been scaled down is also a project, which we have now expanded into different areas so it will not just be in a particular location but it will be spread out across the state.”
He said the project was earlier meant to be only in Sohra area but ADB came and said that Sohra may not have the capacity to absorb all of this so we need to expand the area.
“They also suggested that apart from tourism alone other aspects of eco-tourism and also for agriculture could also be included in this particular EAP so based on that we have changed the scope of this project and now today we are going to cover the entire state.
It is going to be focused on tourism as well as on agri-based livelihood development project,” he added.
Meanwhile, the state Cabinet has also approved the decision to adopt the Meghalaya Right to Information Rules, 2025.
Sangma said the state of Meghalaya had not adopted the new rules passed by the Centre in 2012.
“Hence, today we have decided to incorporate the different aspects of the changes that were made and inline with government of India’s rules which they changed from 2005 to 2012 and we have today incorporated the changes accordingly and amended our own rules and come up with new Meghalaya Right to Information Rules, 2025.”
