Numbers buried inside the Coimbatore Corporation’s budget for 2019-20 indicate that the civic body’s financial health seems to be improving. The first and biggest of the announcements that came from Commissioner J. Sravan Kumar is that the budget had estimated a surplus of Rs. 4.74 crore. But that is not the whole picture.
The Corporation’s revenue receipts is expected to go by up 11.07% or ₹ 64.23 crore compared to the revised estimates of 2018-19. Revenue receipts include the money flowing into the Corporation’s coffers from property tax, rental income from its properties, fees and user charges, revenue grants, contribution and interest.
The civic body expects the increase to mainly come from tax revenue. The Corporation had estimated its tax revenue at ₹ 157.12 crore in the last budget but revised it to ₹ 187.86 crore. In the 2019-20 budget it had projected the revenue receipts to ₹ 277.34 crore.
This confidence to increase the tax revenue by ₹ 89.48 crore seems to have come from increasing the property tax collection from ₹ 63.62 crore to ₹ 91.04 crore for the next financial year’s current demand.
The Corporation officials say that the with the civic body achieving over 90% tax collection, it is not an implausible projection. The civic body also seems to have placed its bet on collecting tax arrears by setting a target of ₹ 17.07 crore.
On the revenue expenditure front, the Corporation has planned to repay ₹ 7.48 crore as interest in 2019-20 on loans it had taken from various State Government agencies. Last year, the civic body planned to repay ₹ 10 crore but managed to repay only ₹ 8.69 crore.
On the 'other liabilities' side, the Corporation has planned to pay ₹ 10 crore to contractors for works they had undertaken in the past. In the 2018-19 budget, the Corporation had planned to pay ₹ 40 crore but paid only ₹ 25 crore.
Likewise, for repaying loans it had availed of from Central and State governments, the Corporation had said that during 2018-19 it would pay ₹ 70.20 crore but it actually paid only around ₹ 24 crore. For 2019-20, the Corporation said it would repay loans worth ₹ 65.34 crore.
The Corporation has also projected an increase in interest from its investments in banks. The latest budget said that it hoped to earn ₹ 2.66 crore in 2019-20 as against the ₹ 2.53 crore it earned last year.