Development authority presents `5,570-cr budget

With a budget of Rs 5,570 crore, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) will focus on improving the city’s transport facilities this year.

With a budget of Rs 5,570 crore, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) will focus on improving the city’s transport facilities this year.

HT Image

The MMRDA unveiled its 2011-12 budget on Tuesday, which was considerably less than what the development authority had planned to spend on Mumbai’s infrastructure last year. The authority had presented a budget of Rs 6,143 crore for the year 2010-2011.

Even though there are no new projects earmarked for the future, MMRDA officials said they were looking at consolidating and finalising all the transport projects in the city.

The MMRDA has made provision for improving the city’s transport system by allocating Rs 964 crore for the monorail project, Rs 300 crore for the Metro project, Rs 600 cr for the Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project and Rs 700 crore for extended MUIP.

However, the authority’s budget seems to have taken a hit. It has been scaling down the amount from the past three years – from Rs 6,653 crore in 2009-10 to Rs 6,143 crore in 2010-11 to Rs 5570 cr in 2011-12.

MMRDA officials accepted that there has been a slump in the budget, but claim that the amount has been lesser this year since several money-consuming projects, such as the water transport and the Nariman Point redevelopment projects for which close to Rs 200 crore were earmarked earlier are currently on hold.

The authority is expecting revenue generation of Rs 3,357 crore with Rs 1,05,97 crore expected out of sale of land.

We are looking at selling some of the land in BKC this year,” SVR Srinivas, joint metropolitan commissioner.