NMC misses revised property tax target too

Nagpur: Even though municipal commissioner Abhijit Bangar had revised the standing committee’s budget for 2018-19 by 22% — from Rs2,946 crore to Rs2,277.06 crore — the revenue target remains beyond the Nagpur Municipal Corporation’s reach.
From property tax, which is its main revenue source, the civic body has managed to generate only Rs210 crore till March end. The standing committee had aimed at mopping up Rs509 crore, which was revised to Rs275 crore by Bangar.

An official from the tax department told TOI that the revenue generated from property tax does not include payments done online and through RTGS mode. Even the tax recovery from government institutions was not included. “Including these may increase the tax collection by another Rs5 crore to Rs215 crore,” said the official.

TOI has earlier reported that NMC is not only failing to meet Bangar’s revised budget target but also the property tax target.

The civic body had issued only 4.70 lakh invoices (amounting to Rs413 crore) during the last fiscal. The assessment and collection department had been prodding citizens since March 1 to pay property tax in order to meet the revised target. Rs35 crore property tax was collected in March alone while the collection for the month last year Rs56 crore.

The official pointed out that many citizens paid their tax on March 31, when NMC managed to collect Rs3.25 crore. This was expected as several citizens pay their taxes only in the last month of the financial year.

The official blamed election duty for this year’s poor recovery. According to him, most of the NMC staffers have been engaged in election duty.

The market department fared well as compared to last year. In 2017-18, the department had generated revenue of Rs8.02 crore. This year, it generated Rs9.08 crore against the target of Rs12 crore.

The NMC is yet to reconcile revenue generated from other sources like water works department, town planning department etc

Sensing poor revenue generation, Bangar had also cut the civic body’s expenditure by 30% from January this year.

Former standing committee chairman Virendra Kukreja had blamed the lackadaisical attitude of the NMC officials and employees for poor revenue collection.

According to Kukreja, had the NMC employees been serious about their job, civic body’s revenue could have improved significantly.