MC set to unveil budget tomorrow

Shivani Bhakoo

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, March 28

The Municipal Corporation budget for 2017-18 will be presented at the General House on March 30. The proposed budget for the next financial year is around Rs 1,249 crore, Rs 37 crore less than the previous year.

It includes grants and funds from various agencies, including state government, banks, Punjab Infrastructure Development Board (PIDB) etc.

Last year, the civic body has failed to achieve its income target of Rs 685 crore. It managed to earn Rs 475 crore from all sources, including water and sewerage, operations and maintenance, property tax etc. Sources said not much attention was paid to generating income last year as it was an election year.

Keeping this in mind, the civic body authorities have reduced the target for many departments this year. The MC has lowered the proposed property tax collection to Rs 10 crore from the last year’s Rs20 crore. Similarly, the target for operations and maintenance cell was reduced to Rs 55 crore from Rs 60 crore in 2016-17.

The “lucrative” revenue-generating resource, which remained in controversies in all these years, was advertisement. In the absence of a proper advertisement policy, the income target for the sector is kept at a mere Rs 4 crore.

Recently, annual target for various departments have been raised after Mayor Harcharan Singh Gohalwaria expressed dissatisfaction over the budget report prepared by the “administrative” staff. The mayor said the budget should be prepared by elected representatives because they are the ones who have to carry out development works in respective areas. He said, “We will present the budget in the House, which will take a final call on it.”

Responding to the mayor’s dissatisfaction, an official, who wished not to be named, said, “One should live in reality. There is no fun in keeping the target so high. The targets are set for officials/staff and then politicians intervene to please their vote-bank. When these targets are not achieved, the staff faces the wrath of both public and politicians.”