Civic chief vows proper utilisation of funds

Following reports which claimed that majority of budget funds gets lapsed every year, city municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta has vowed to ensure proper utilisation of funds.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has started taking efforts to ensure strict implementation of budgetary provisions, he said.

The annual budget for the year 2016-17 was passed in the BMC house Friday midnight. At least 84 corporators participated in the budget discussion, which went on for about 50 hours.

Replying to the debate, Mr Mehta said that the BMC would use its budgetary funds properly this year. “The planning has been done accurately and meticulously for appropriate utilisation of funds. For this, measures such as administrative approval for works, implementation of tender process, issuing of work orders, carrying out qualitative works will be carried out as per schedule,” he said. The review of all civic works will be taken regularly. In all the wards, co-ordination officers have been appointed for the proper use of budget provisions. The onus of executing budget works will be on them. Every month, a budget review meeting is being held to take stock of budget provisions and their expenditure, said Mr Mehta.

To ensure competitive and transparent methods, all tenders will be held only by ‘e-tender’ process. Appropriate changes have been made in terms and conditions for inviting tenders. This will lead to healthy competition in contractors and the BMC will get the most competitive bids, he said.

The civic chief has also expressed concern over the growing revenue expenditure. “Even as the establishment cost, revenue expenditure is rising, the capital expenditure has remained almost static. This will adversely affect the civic infrastructure works,” he said. “There has been a whopping rise of more than Rs 7,300 crore in the revenue expenditure in last five years from 2009-10 to 2014-15. But there is hardly any change in capital expenditure,” he added.

Every year, the BMC has been failing to ensure maximum utilisation of funds resulting in large chunk of budgetary provisions getting lapsed. According to civic officials, only about 40 per cent funds are likely to be spent on civic works by the end of this financial year. For the financial year of 2014-15, the BMC has made a provision of Rs 11,816 crore for infrastructure development and civic amenities. The departments where the funds have been unused are all important departments such as roads and traffic, bridges, fire brigade, markets, disaster management cell, etc.

“Every year funds worth crores of rupees are left unused owing to the apathy of civic administration, due to which civic projects are affected,” said senior Congress corporator Devendra Amberkar.