E-auction of Iron Ore in Goa evokes poor response

Goa government's e-auction of iron ore received poor response with hardly 25 per cent of the ore which was on sale went in during the bidding.
"We had identified 21 lakh ton of ore at different sites in the state of which 5.46 lakh ton was sold yesterday fetching bid value of around Rs 44.41 crore," Director of Mines and Geology, Goa, Prasanna Acharya said.
This was the 15th e-auctioning by the state government which had put up the ore for sale online.
After getting consistent poor response for the e-auctioning, the department had slashed the minimum earnest money deposit (EMD).

The minimum EMD was Rs one lakh for bidding upto 5,000 metric tons from the earlier Rs 25 lakhs for bidding upto 1,000 metric tons of iron ore.
The bidders were asked to deposit Rs onelakh for bidding upto 5,000 MT and in multiplies of Rs one lakh for every additional quantity of 5,OOO MT.

Of the total 15 million tons of ore identified for e-auction, 7.71 million tons is still stacked waiting for auction.
In last two years, Department of Mines and Geology has managed toe-auctiononly 7.29 million tons of ore, of which 7 million tons being moved out of the site.

Nearly 46 lakh tons of ore is been exported.