Nagpur: Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) officials have failed to achieve revised budget target for 2017-18. Municipal commissioner Ashwin Mudgal had revised ex-standing committee chairman Sandip Jadhav’s Rs2,271.97 crore budget to Rs1,997.33 crore. Though the budget was slashed by almost Rs274.64 crore, the civic body managed to generate approximately Rs1689.96 crore.
However, Mudgal had even missed the 2017-18 budget target set by then municipal commissioner Shravan Hardikar by over Rs17 crore. Hardikar had presented Rs1,707.80 crore budget and then Mudgal revised the same to Rs1,997.33 crore.
Of the revenue generated, the NMC has received Rs1036.28 crore as government grants including Rs609.33 crore against LBT and implementation of GST.
Sources in the NMC told TOI that the civic body had generated only Rs1,529.96 cores till March 31. It is expecting Rs160 crores from the state and central governments as grants under various heads. “Including this amount, the NMC’s revenue generation for the last fiscal will be around Rs1689.96 crore,” said an NMC official.
The dependency of NMC on government grants to fund its budget has increased this year too if one sees the financial data of the civic body. According to figures procured from NMC, over 70% of the income in 2017-18 came from state government while 30% of their income came from local taxes like property tax, water tax, market dues etc.
Hardikar had set the target of property tax revenue at Rs250 crore. An amnesty scheme was launched and the NMC had even started auctioning properties to realize the target but the civic body recovered only Rs196.67 crore, NMC’s finance and accounts department data revealed.
The Town Planning Department (MTP), which contributes a major chunk to revenue, was expected to earn Rs101.25 crore, but managed only Rs48.64 crore. The market department hoped to collect Rs13.50 crore, but officials recovered only Rs7.75 crore.
The Water Supply Department had to recover Rs139.88 crore against the target of Rs170 crore.
Standing committee chairman Virendra Kukreja admitted that low revenue collection had affected the development work planned for the city in the last budget. “So this year the ruling party has started taking revenue meeting of almost all departments to improve revenue collection of the NMC,” he said and cited that the revenue of NMC from property tax can easily go up by Rs500 crore. According to him, the revenue from town planning department will also cross Rs200 crore mark.
The civic body attributed the poor collection to various factors. “Abolishment of octroi and Local Body Tax had a major impact on the revenue,” said a senior official. The civic elections too had a great impact on property tax collection, he added.
“Low revenue collection affected the development work planned for the city, but the timely release of grants from state government has helped the civic body to continue the works in the last budget,” said standing committee chairman Virendra Kukreja.
Acknowledging the financial crisis faced by the NMC, he said that only central government grants to the NMC in lieu of GST can improve its economic condition. NMC is expecting a grant of over Rs1000 crore per annum from the central government, he said. Kukreja said he would focus on improving recovery of property tax.
