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Chandigarh MC looks to tighten purse strings amid cash crunch
MC chief Amit Kumar’s directions came amid the civic body’s deepening financial crunch, which has forced it to halt all development related works since May and even put long-pending road carpeting projects on hold
For the past five years, the annual expenditure of the Chandigarh municipal corporation (MC) has increased manifold with only a marginal rise in generating revenue through own sources, the data shared by MC has revealed.
This comes days after Punjab governor and UT administrator Gulab Chand Kataria directed MC officials and councillors to curtail expenses and focus on improving revenue generation.
Now, in a bid to curtail expenses, municipal commissioner Amit Kumar on Thursday directed all departments of the MC to provide detailed reports of subheads incurring monthly expenditures exceeding ₹1 lakh.
The commissioner aims to identify departments with huge financial outflows and strategise ways to curtail unnecessary spending. “Plans will be made in each subhead to cut the unnecessary expenses. With no immediate relief and short time revenue generation plans, we have to look out ways to cut down on expenses. Departments have been instructed to submit comprehensive data, including specifics of recurring costs and their justifications,” Kumar said.
The directions came amid MC’s deepening financial crunch, which has forced it to halt all development related works since May and even put long-pending road carpeting projects on hold.
The crisis is so severe that the corporation may not be able to even pay out staff salaries in the coming months.
41% increase in MC’s expenses since 2019
As per official data, MC’s annual expenditure was ₹701 crore in 2019-20, against its own revenue generation of ₹196 crore. The expenditure increased to ₹710 crore the following year, and subsequently to ₹760 crore in 2021-22. In the fiscal year 2022-23, the total expenditure reached ₹943 crore and to ₹991 crore last year. Last fiscal, the civic body could generate only ₹321 crore, against its projection of ₹550 crore. To put things into perspective, MC’s total expenditure saw a steep surge of 41% in 2022-23 when compared to 2019-20.
This fiscal (till September 30), MC generated only ₹176 crore and the total expenditure count has reached ₹551 crore. Of the total expenses made, the corporation has spent ₹147 crore on wages of contractual or outsourced staff, ₹145 crore as salaries of regular staff and only ₹59 crore on development works. Interestingly, MC has spent ₹14 crore on petrol or high speed diesel, ₹55 crore on minor works, ₹8 crore on office expenses, ₹6.6 crore on non-residential buildings, and ₹2.7 on landscaping, among other expenses.
