Financial year ending but civic body yet to spend 50% of its budget

While the corporation’s revised capital expenditure estimates stand at Rs 4,289.66 crore, actual expenditure till March 25 shows that barely Rs 2,141.79 crore has been utilised.

For the next financial year, the corporation has made an estimate of Rs 31,000 crore, up by almost 13 per cent from the current fiscal budget of Rs 27,500 crore.

Even after the Dockyard Building collapse in September 2013, the lowest expenditure, about 4.8 per cent of a revised estimate of Rs 28.75 crore, has been recorded in the estates department, which looks after the upkeep of the civic-owned buildings. These amount to roughly 5,000 properties across the city.

Expenditure on the Fire Brigade department remains less than 15 per cent of the department’s revised budgets, despite the growing urgency for upgrades. In fact, capital expenditure, recorded at 14.8 per cent, has risen seven times from 2 per cent at the end of January. This, despite the fire brigade inviting criticism recently for being ill-equipped and its compromised ability to combat different kinds of blazes.

While the the roads department had expected to cross the Rs 1,000 crore-mark in expenditure for the current financial year, it has managed to spend barely Rs 594.92 crore, or 58.5 per cent of the revised estimate of Rs 1,016.54 crore, till date. Around 22 per cent of this expenditure was in the past two months alone. At the start of the current financial year, the corporation had envisaged a budget estimate of over Rs 2,000 crore for roads, traffic and bridges.

Opposition leader Devendra Amberkar from the Congress said, “The BMC and the ruling coalition (Shiv Sena-BJP) are misleading the public. What is the point in announcing large budgets if the departments do not even know how to spend them? These are campaigning gimmicks that ultimately make the public suffer.”

“The roads department budget could not be utilised for a while because of the court case on potholes. Still, our expenditure is likely to rise in the next week as we are clearing bills for many works completed this year. Regarding the low expenditure in the estates department, we keep expenditure for repairs till a month before PAPs (project-affected persons) agree to move in, otherwise renovations go waste as many flats remain empty,” additional municipal commissioner SVR Srinivas said.

The highest capital expenditure has been recorded in the bridges department, with about 61.9 per cent of Rs 209.74 crore spent so far. Forty per cent of this expenditure took place after January. It is followed by the health department, where 60.41 per cent of the capital budget of Rs 436.14 crore has been utilised.

alison.saldanha@expressindia.com