BMC budget: Focus on roads, water?

A cash-strapped Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is likely to allocate more funds for essential services in its budget for 2020-21 on Tuesday. The civic

A cash-strapped Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is likely to allocate more funds for essential services in its budget for 2020-21 on Tuesday. The civic body may prioritise upgrading Mumbai’s road infrastructure, augmenting drinking water supply and mitigating water logging during monsoon over spending on maintaining gardens, sports complexes and swimming pools.

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Civic chief Praveen Pardeshi, who will present his first budget, is unlikely to increase taxes or introduce new ones. “BMC has examined the issue, and has not seen any scope to increase taxes,” a senior civic official told HT in January.

The budget, which will be tabled before the civic standing committee on Tuesday, is likely to focus on completion of existing big-ticket infrastructure projects – Coastal Road, Goregaon-Mulund Link Road (GMLR) and the Gargai Dam project. The civic body may also announce new infrastructure projects such as construction of missing links for roads to streamline traffic and building underground water silos to hold rain water during flooding.

The BMC is also likely to explore options to manage its depleting finances, by delegating its non-essential, or discretionary, responsibilities to be fulfilled under public-private partnerships (PPP). These include maintaining gardens, forts, sports complexes, auditoriums, swimming pools and infrastructure for secondary school education.

“BMC cannot compromise on expenditure for essential duties such as roads, water, sewage, garbage, primary education and primary healthcare. Other services will see reduced budgetary allocation and more participation from citizens. This will help reduce revenue expenditure on discretionary duties,” said a senior civic official, on condition of anonymity.

The civic body’s revenue from its top two sources of income has witnessed a decrease in 2019-20. BMC received only 57.34%, or ₹1579.45 crore, of its estimated revenue (₹2,754.36 crore) from development charges from real estate. The civic body’s property tax collection till January 2020 was ₹2,878 crore, which is ₹630 crore less than last year’s collection during the same period.