Civic chief to present 2018-19 NMC budget on March 9

NAGPUR: Municipal commissioner Ashwin Mudgal will present the budget for 2018-19 before the standing committee at a special meeting to be held on March 9.
Newly elected chairman Virendra Kukreja will examine the budget proposals and present it later.

Mudgal will also present the revised budget for the current fiscal. The budgets were to be presented on or before February 5 but got delayed due to reasons best known to the ruling party.

Sources from NMC’s accounts and finance department told TOI that Mudgal will slash former standing committee chairman Sandip Jadhav’s budget by almost 40%. Though no new taxes will be imposed on citizens, Mudgal may propose imposition of professional tax. NMC is hoping to generate Rs100 crore under this head. Besides, he may also propose to take a loan of Rs200 crore to meet the expenditure incurred on development works especially cement roads of phase-II and phase-II.

The revised budget will be based on the actual revenue of NMC up to January 31, 2017. The revenue was Rs472.36 crore against last year’s Rs388.31 crore. The revenue was hit to a great extent in the current fiscal and its impact will be seen in the revised budget. The then municipal commissioner Shravan Hardikar had presented a budget of Rs1,707.80 crore for the current fiscal while former chairman Jadhav’s budget was of Rs2,271 crore.