The outlay of the civic budget for 2020-21 presented on Monday - ₹10,899.23 crore - is over ₹750 crore less than the outlay for the previous year’s ₹11,652.93 crore. While this is a welcome correction, it is still not realistic, say experts.

The revised estimate for 2019-20 seems to be a good indicator of how unrealistic the budget estimates this year still are. As against an outlay of ₹11,652.93 crore, revised estimates have come down to around ₹7,068 crore, a variance of 39%, up from 27% during the previous year, data from Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy points out. The data also shows the revised estimate of budgets of the civic body has never touched the ₹8,000 crore mark, the highest being ₹7,514 crore in 2017-18.

“The internal capacity of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to generate revenues or to even spend the State government grants is limited. Given that the economy is in a slump and the extent of impact of COVID-19 is yet to be estimated, there is no way we are going to achieve ₹10,899 crore this year, while we could achieve only 61% of the outlay last year,” said urban expert V. Ravichandar. The variance that averaged at around 29% since 2016-17, as per data from Janaagraha, may only shoot up north this year, he said.

The civic body continues to be dependent on grants from the State and Union governments – 40% of the outlay this year, 4% less than last year that the civic body proposes to do mobilising its own resources. The BBMP has set a target of ₹3,500 crore for property tax collection this year, the same target as the previous year. It has collected ₹2,689.65 crore achieving 76.8% of the target.

The civic body has given itself a target to collect ₹325 crore through tax evasion dues found by the Total Station Survey the previous year and proposes an extensive drive to collect arrears from all defaulters. The budget proposes to incorporate property tax default for more than three years in Encumbrance Certificate of the property. The civic body has also announced a reward of ₹1 lakh to the revenue team that achieves 95% tax collection in each zone, to incentivise tax collection. The budget also says stringent steps will be taken to collect pending betterment charges of ₹300 crore for DC converted properties in the new zones.