In July,check civic expense sheet online

Come July and taxpayers will know exactly how much money was spent by the civic body for providing basic facilities and development projects to make Mumbai the global metropolis.

Come July and taxpayers will know exactly how much money was spent by the civic body for providing basic facilities and development projects to make Mumbai the global metropolis. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will keep its two-year-old promise to disclose information and details of its work to citizens by publishing the expenditure on capital accounts online and in newspapers.

Public Records Of Operations and Finance or PROOF was one of the highlights of the 2007-08 budget,by which citizens will be provided with a quarterly report on amounts budgeted,actual expenditure and how much remains to be spent. The first quarterly balance sheet for 2008-09 is likely to be published in the first week of July.

The initiative was delayed by problems of reconciliation and data switch from manual records to the SAP-ERP format, said chief accountant (finance) Ram Dhas.

Proof is one of the reforms mandated under the Centres Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. The balance sheet will be made available on mcgm.gov.in. The 2009-10 budget is already on the site.

We hope all expenditures are made public,even at the ward level so that corporators can be held responsible, said Surendra Srivastava of Lok Satta,an organisation working towards making the civic body accountable.

The BMC is also publishing a separate booklet of ward-by-ward budgets. Citizens have often complained that the budget is difficult to understand. Dhas said copies will be kept in each ward for citizens to check. The copies will be printed after the budget gets the final nod by the general body of 227 corporators and they will be available for perusal from April 1.

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