BMC spent ₹1,050 crore in 8 months on Covid-19 fight
MUMBAI: Eight months after the first case of coronavirus was reported in the city, India’s richest civic body, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation , has spent more than ₹1,050 crore on Covid-19 related expenses.
Though the cases have been controlled, Mumbai is among the cities that have reported the highest number of Covid-19 cases in the country. According to BMC officials, most of the expenses have been incurred towards the procurement of medical equipment such as personal protective equipment (PPE) kits, N-95 masks, three-ply masks, gloves, face shields, hydroxychloroquine, thermometers, body bags, protective eyewear, sanitisers etc; augmentation of existing health infrastructure and setting up new facilities such as Covid-19 centres and jumbo facilities; hotel bills to lodge frontline staff; recruitment of new staff on contractual basis and distribution of food in the initial days of the outbreak.
From its total budget of ₹33,441.02 crore for 2020-2021, the civic body had allocated a special fund of ₹2 crore to upgrade medical facilities at Kasturba Hospital in the light of a possible Covid-19 outbreak.
A month after the outbreak, BMC had spent around ₹100 crore, which went up to nearly ₹480 crore in June. After the expenses surged over ₹1,050 crore in November, the BMC has estimated the expenditure to reach ₹1,200 crore by December.
Though the BMC’s revenue from several avenues such as real estate and property tax have taken a hit owing to the pandemic in the ongoing financial year, it says it will not raise money by taking loans from any third party.
P Velrasu, additional commissioner, BMC, said, “We have spent around ₹1,050 crore on Covid-19 till now. We are taking steps to ensure the revenue flow and are also studying various options to invest money from our reserves in government bonds. We do not have any plans to take any loans for our projects and will manage funding from our own resources.”
BMC has reserve funds of around ₹66,958.09 crore as fixed deposits in banks and it is exploring other investment options such as government bonds, within the ambit of investments permitted for government bodies. Velrasu said, “We already have a bank on our board as a consultant which will guide us on investment in government bonds.”
However, the Congress, which is in the Opposition in BMC, has demanded that the civic body present a bifurcation of the entire expenditure. “We have sent back over 170 proposals presented before the standing committee related to the Covid-19 expenditure during the lockdown. We need the bifurcation of the expenditure from BMC, but it has not provided it. So we suspect wrongdoings in the expenses,” Congress corporator Ravi Raja, who is the leader of Opposition, said.
For the 2021-2022 budget, BMC plans to allocate funds exclusively for Covid-19, which will be separate from the allocation made to the public health department.