PRAJAKTA KASALE prajakta. kasale@ mid- day. com THE Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation ( BMC) budget will be presented today to the Standing Committee. It is expected that the civic administration will propose new charges or taxes, and schemes to collect pending dues to boost its income, which has seen a sharp dip due to dwindling property tax and Development Plan department charges ( DP charges comes from real estate sector).
The civic body might also try to allot more funds to ongoing projects like wastewater treatment plants, the Coastal Road, two bridges near Mahalaxmi station etc.
Last year the budget was R . . , . . . crore. There may not be a drastic change in the budget size this year, but the civic administration is keen to increase its revenue. In previous years, municipal commissioners had introduced various charges including property tax on slum homes, one per cent surcharge on buying and selling of properties, and service charges for art and entertainment facilities to improve BMC revenue. But these werenu2019t implemented. Even in the last budget, no additional taxes were introduced.
So it is expected that there will be indirect taxes or an increase in charges.
Big projects might gain The BMC commissioner might also give more weightage to ongoing big projects instead of new ones. The allotments for the Coastal Road and wastewater treatment plants may get a significant rise. In the last budget, there was a provision of R . , . . . crore for the Coastal Road. Its work had stalled after a court order for over six months and the BMC used only R . . . crore till December. The work has started and the civic body wants to make up for the delay. The R . . , . . . crore wastewater treatment plants are also in the tendering process.
There will also be an allotment for the two pending bridges near Mahalaxmi station. Standing Committee recently passed a R . . . crore proposal for the bridges. The proposed R . , . . . crore Deonar waste- to- energy plant will be allotted funds. Municipal Commissioner Pravin Pardeshi started the project of Miyawaki forests.
The city expects more environment enhancing projects. Last year, there had been a budget allocation of R . , . . . crore for the implementation of the DP. But the civic body spent merely R . crore till December end. It will be interesting to see how much allocation the DP gets. Societies may get up to . per cent rebate in property tax for processing waste.
u2018 Identify new sources of incomeu2019 u201c The BMC should try to complete the pending projects in stipulated time period. More importantly, it must identify new sources of income and execute them,u201d said Rais Shaikh, group leader of Samajwadi Party in the BMC. Will the civic body propose new taxes to increase revenue? BMC is keen on finding ways to increase its income that has taken a sharp hit due to falling revenue from the real estate sector BMC u001f BUDGET The allotment of funds for the coastal road might get a significant rise
