The city Corporation’s budget for the financial year 2016-17, presented on Thursday, touches upon the need to increase the local body’s revenue to improve its service delivery to the common people. But, in the head-wise income and expenditure projections for the next year, there seems to be lack of clarity on how exactly this improvement will come about.
The budget speech states explicitly that the civic body does not intend to burden the common population with further taxes. The focus will be on increasing revenue through rents from shopping malls, complexes, and other physical infrastructure like multi-level parking lots, a project which has found mention in all the recent budgets without any progress being made on the actual construction.
As per the budget document, the total revenue receipts for the Corporation in the financial year 2015-16 was Rs.401 crore, out of which Rs.144 crore was the revenue from taxes and Rs.4.22 crore was that from rental of municipal properties. Fees and user charges form a big chunk with Rs.25.9 crore.
The break-up
For the year 2016-17, the revenue projected by the budget is actually less than the revenue of the previous year at Rs.392.6 crore, despite the comments in the budget speech on the need to increase revenue.
Out of this projected revenue, Rs.153.7 crore is the revenue from taxes and Rs.5.8 crore from municipal property rentals. Revenue from fees and user charges is projected as Rs.27.9 crore.
The property tax collection for the year is projected to increase by Rs.5 crore, from Rs.55 crore to Rs.60 crore. The entertainment tax for the year is projected to increase by Rs.2 crore, from Rs.6.5 crore to Rs.8.5 crore. A similar increase is also projected in the professional taxes.
