Eye on polls, budget focus on health, infra and edu
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal presented his first civic budget for the financial year (FY) 2021-22 on Wednesday. Despite the massive revenue shortfall, the budgetary estimate for the financial year 2021-22 has been pegged at Rs 39,038.83 crore, which is 16.74 per cent higher than that of the budget for FY 2020-21 (Rs 33,441.02 crore).
The civic budget, with a focus on infrastructure, health, education and transport, has introduced no new taxes while also deferring the revision in the property tax rate this year too.
The overall budget estimate of the revenue income for the financial year 2020-21 was Rs 28,448.30 crore, which was revised to Rs 22,572.13 crore, a reduction of Rs 5,876.17 crore. The budget estimate for the financial year 2021-22 for revenue income is proposed to be Rs 27,811.57 crore, Rs 636.73 crore less than that of 2020-21.
Rs 14,637 crore have been allocated for capital expenditure works in FY21, which includes traffic operation and roads (Rs 2,699.65 crore), the coastal road project (Rs 2,000 crore), water supply projects (Rs 1,728.85 crore), stormwater drains (Rs 912.10 crore), and sewage disposal (Rs 870.94 crore), among others.
Though only 48 per cent of last year’s allocation could be spent on various development projects on account of the Covid-19 pandemic, the civic body’s budget outlay is 16.74 per cent higher than that for last year. The total budget estimates for FY2020-21 were 8.95 per cent more than the 2019-20 fiscal’s budgetary outlay of Rs 30,692 crore, which was 12.5 per cent higher than the 2018-19 estimates.
Criticising the budget outlay, Samajwadi Party corporator and MLA from Bhiwandi Rais Shaikh said, “In my opinion, the budget for the year 2021-2022 has been inflated. In this budget, the commissioner has stated that Rs 4,000 crore will be taken out of the reserve fund and capital expenditure will be made and a loan of Rs 5,000 crore will be taken. Somewhere or the other, the burden of this debt will impact the pockets of ordinary citizens of Mumbai.”