8 months after 1st Covid-19 case was reported in Mumbai, the civic body has spent ₹1,050 crore for fight against pandemic

BMC has estimated the expenditure to reach Rs1,200 crore by December

Eight months after the first case of Covid-19 was reported in the city, India’s richest civic body, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), has spent more than Rs1,050 crore on Covid-19 related expenses.

Majority of the expenses occurred for setting up health infrastructure. (HT File)

Though the cases in the city have been controlled, Mumbai is among the cities that have reported the highest number of Covid-19 cases in the country. According to BMC officials, the major expenses have incurred towards the procurement of medical equipment such as personal protective equipment (PPE) kits, N-95 masks, 3-ply masks, gloves, face shields, hydroxychloroquine, thermometers, body bags, protective eye-wear, sanitisers etc; augmentation of existing health infrastructure and setting up new facilities such as Covid-19 centres and jumbo facilities; hotel bills to lodge frontline staff; recruitment of new staff on contractual basis and distribution of food in the initial days of the outbreak.

From its total budget of Rs33,441.02 crore for 2020-2021, the civic body had allocated a special fund of Rs2 crore to upgrade medical facilities at Kasturba Hospital in the light of a possible Covid-19 outbreak.

Though the BMC’s revenue from several avenues such as real estate and property tax have been taken a hit due to the pandemic for the ongoing financial year, it says it will not raise money by taking loans from any third party.

P Velrasu, additional commissioner, BMC, said, “We have spent around Rs1,050 crore on Covid-19 till now, and in the coming days too, we will be able to meet the expenditure from our own resources. We are taking steps to ensure the revenue flow and are also studying various options to invest money from our reserves into government bonds. We do not have any plans to take any loans for our projects and will manage funding from our own resources.”

BMC has reserve funds of around Rs66,958.09 crore as fixed deposits in banks and it is exploring other investment options such as government bonds, within the ambit of investments permitted for government bodies by the Centre and under the Municipal Corporation Act, 1888.

Velrasu said, “We already have a bank on our board as a consultant who will guide us on investment into government bonds.”

However, the Congress, which is in the Opposition in BMC, has demanded that the civic body present a bifurcation of the entire expenditure.

“We have referred back over 170 proposals in the standing committee related to the Covid-19 expenditure during the lockdown. We need the bifurcation of the expenditure from BMC, but it has not provided it. There could be wrongdoings in the expenses, considering we are not being provided with the bifurcation,” Ravi Raja, Congress corporator and leader of Opposition said.

For the next financial budget (2021-2022), BMC plans to allocate funds exclusively for Covid-19 that will be separate from the allocation made to the public health department.