Goa's Economy Produced Rs 7.09 Lakh Per Resident in 2024-25, About Three Times India's Average, in a State That Has Existed Only Since 30 May 1987

Goa’s economy produced Rs 7,09,045 for every resident in 2024-25, about three times India’s Rs 2,34,859 a head, according to PRS Legislative Research’s analysis of the state budget, which draws on Ministry of Statistics figures. That is gross state domestic product (GSDP, the value of everything a state produces in a year) divided by population, so it measures output per head and not what an average Goan earns. The state’s own statistics directorate, in a table it labels per capita income, gives a higher quick estimate of Rs 7,37,738.

The state covers 3,702 square kilometres and held 14,58,545 people at the 2011 Census, the source of the population figures here because the next census is still under way. The Government of Goa counts it as the 25th state, formed on 30 May 1987.

How Goa came to be a state

Goa spent the first 25 years after 1961 inside a Union territory, an area the Centre administers directly. The Goa, Daman and Diu (Administration) Act, 1962, treated as in force from 5 March 1962, took 20 December 1961 as its appointed day. It kept every law then in force in the territory alive until a competent legislature or authority changed it, and it gave the territory two Lok Sabha seats. How the territory came under Indian control is told in our account of Goa’s liberation.

Whether Goa should stay a separate unit was put to voters on 16 January 1967. The choice was merger with Maharashtra or continuing as a Union territory, and the Government of Goa calls the poll the first of its kind in the country. The result, declared on 18 January, was to continue as a Union territory.

Statehood came through three measures in 1987. The Legislative Assembly passed the Official Language Bill on 4 February. Parliament passed the Fifty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution. The Goa, Daman and Diu Reorganisation Act then formed a State of Goa from the Goa district and a new Union territory of Daman and Diu from the other two districts, with 30 May 1987 as the appointed day under a notification of 26 May.

How Goa is governed

Section 12 of the Reorganisation Act fixes the Legislative Assembly at 40 directly elected seats. The Representation of the People Act, 1950 reserves one of them for Scheduled Castes and none for Scheduled Tribes, and gives Goa two Lok Sabha seats, neither reserved. The Constitution’s Fourth Schedule allots one Rajya Sabha seat. Goa has a single chamber: the Third Schedule of the same Act lists Legislative Councils for six other states and not for Goa.

Article 170 says a state’s Assembly must have at least 60 members, so a 40-seat Assembly needed an exception. Article 371I, in force from 30 May 1987, provides that the Goa Assembly “shall consist of not less than thirty members.” The Statement of Objects and Reasons of 6 May 1987 explains the mechanics. The Union territory’s Assembly had 30 elected and three nominated members, and with the two Daman and Diu members removed it was to act as the provisional Assembly of the new state until elections at the end of its five-year term. The Article 371 explainer sets out the other states that have a provision of this kind.

The 2011 Census tables in the state’s Goa Economy in Figures 2026 show two districts, 12 talukas (sub-districts), 191 village panchayats and 70 towns, 14 of them municipal towns. The 1987 Act makes the High Court of Bombay the common High Court for Goa and Maharashtra, and the High Court at Bombay (Extension of Jurisdiction to Goa, Daman and Diu) Act, 1981 provides a permanent bench at Panaji, in force from 30 October 1982.

Konkani, Marathi and English in one Act

The Goa, Daman and Diu Official Language Act, 1987, passed by the Assembly on 4 February and assented to by the President on 14 April, makes Konkani in Devanagari script the official language from a date the Administrator notifies. The Administrator may direct that Marathi be used as well in the Goa district. The Act leaves Marathi and Gujarati untouched in education, social and cultural fields, bars discrimination in aid to schools on the ground of language, and keeps English in official use.

Konkani went into the Constitution’s Eighth Schedule through the Seventy-first Amendment. The Government of Goa dates it to 20 August 1992, and the Constitution’s footnote gives 31 August 1992 as the date it came into force. Our guide to state language policies puts Goa’s arrangement beside the other states’.

What Goa’s economy is made of

PRS estimates that in 2024-25, at current prices, agriculture made up 6 per cent of Goa’s economy, manufacturing 46 per cent and services 48 per cent, and that real GSDP grew 12 per cent against 6.5 per cent for India. The state’s quick estimate of GSDP at current prices for 2024-25 is Rs 1,17,079 crore. The same brochure gives per-head income of Rs 7,618 at statehood in 1987-88, which makes the 2024-25 quick estimate about 97 times higher in current rupees, before any adjustment for prices.

The Sixteenth Finance Commission, which recommended how central taxes are shared among the states for 2026-31, says Goa and Sikkim have the highest per capita incomes. It calls Goa by far the smallest non-north-eastern state by population, and says its own tax revenue as a proportion of GSDP is the highest. Its Table 8.9 gives Goa 0.365 per cent of the states’ share, the second smallest after Sikkim’s 0.335 per cent. PRS puts 71 per cent of Goa’s 2026-27 revenue receipts as the state’s own and 29 per cent as transfers from the Centre.

Tourism is the visible side of the economy. Goa Tourism counted 1,08,02,410 arrivals in 2025, of them 1,02,84,608 domestic and 5,17,802 foreign, up from 80,64,400 in 2019. The 2025 total is more than seven times the state’s population at the 2011 Census.

Mining is the other long-running subject. The Supreme Court held in 2014 that Goa’s iron and manganese ore leases had expired on 22 November 2007, and on 7 February 2018 it quashed the second renewals the state had granted. Lease holders could work until 15 March 2018, and from 16 March they had to stop until fresh leases and fresh environmental clearances were granted. The Finance Commission says mining royalties partly support the high own-revenue ratios of Odisha, Goa and Chhattisgarh, and puts Goa’s at 13.2 per cent of GSDP in 2023-24.

A civil code that began in 1867

Family and property law in Goa still rests on the Portuguese Civil Code of 1867 in an amended form. Section 5 of the 1962 Act kept the territory’s earlier laws in force, and in Jose Paulo Coutinho v. Maria Luiza Valentina Pereira, decided on 13 September 2019 by Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose, the Supreme Court held that the Code is Indian law in Goa. It applies to a Goan domiciliary’s property across India, the Court said, and Section 5 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 does not apply to them. The judgment also refers in passing to a uniform civil code as it operates in Goa.

Whether Goa’s single code suits the rest of the country is an open argument, and our guide to personal laws and the Uniform Civil Code debate sets out each side.

What comes next

The Census of 2001 recorded 566 Scheduled Tribe residents of Goa. The Statement of Objects and Reasons of the 2024 Bill notes that Kunbi, Gawda and Velip communities were added to the state’s Scheduled Tribe list in 2003, and the 2011 Census abstract counted 1,49,275 Scheduled Tribe residents, against 25,449 Scheduled Castes, with no Assembly seat reserved for the former.

The Readjustment of Representation of Scheduled Tribes in Assembly Constituencies of the State of Goa Act, 2025 received the President’s assent on 13 August 2025 and The Goan reported that it came into force on 6 August 2026. Under it the Census Commissioner estimates the Scheduled Tribe population and notifies it in the Gazette. The Election Commission then publishes proposals to amend the Delimitation Order, hears objections at public sittings and makes the changes. Section 6 of the Act leaves the present Assembly untouched until it is dissolved. The Goan reports the government expects four of the 40 seats to be reserved, with the final decision resting on the statutory process. The delimitation guide explains why boundary changes follow the census.

On the money side, the 2026-27 budget, presented on 6 March 2026, targets a revenue surplus of Rs 1,667 crore, a fiscal deficit of 3.4 per cent of GSDP and outstanding liabilities of 29.3 per cent of GSDP, PRS reports.