Pune Municipal Corporation Commissioner Mahesh Pathak presents annual civic budget of Rs 3,605.02 crore against last year's (2012-13) budget of Rs 3,290 crore
Municipal Commissioner Mahesh Pathak presented the civic body budget of Rs 3,605.02 crore for 2013-14 yesterday, wherein he suggested an eight per cent hike in property tax and a hike of Rs 100 towards each slab for the recovery of water tax.
Pathak is hopeful that the Standing Committee and the General Body will give a nod for the hike. He had presented a budget of Rs 3,290 crore, which was less by Rs 314.36 crore in comparison to the budget presented yesterday.
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Addressing the house: Municipal Commissioner Mahesh Pathak presents the budget for 2013-14 at a special meeting held at the civic headquarters yesterday
“The tax hike will certainly help increase the income of the PMC, as the city already has 26,000 new properties. We expect revenue over Rs 100 crore from the water tax in comparison to last year’s revenue of Rs 65 crore. We also aim to generate Rs 300 crore in property tax against Rs 230 crore generated last year,” said Pathak.
“We plan to implement a new Local Body Taxes (LBT) system, which is an online procedure, after providing proper training for the staff. At present, Octroi covers about 40 per cent of the income in the PMC budget. LBT will be useful for taking permissions for construction in the city,” he said.
The 2013-14 also had an allocation of Rs 38.60 crore for ‘would be’ merging 28 fringe villages for construction of roads, water supply, sewerage treatment and solid waste management.
“We are also expediting the process of acquiring space in these villages for other civic-related projects,” Pathak said. According to him, the budget would promote Public Private Partnership (PPP) model for many projects in the city and maximum money would be spent on water supply for the city with its new boundary.u00a0
5 more yrs for metro and monorail
An initial budgetary provision of Rs 15.50 crore for the Metro and Monorail projects proposed for the city was also made. The existing project cost may be revised for the two Metro corridors between Vanaz to Ramwadi and Pimpri-Chinchwad to Swargate. The earlier estimated cost was Rs 2,593 crore and Rs 5,391 crore respectively for both the routes. As per the earlier schedule, the project was supposed to be complete by 2014, but now it will take another five years. u00a0“We are raising the amount after setting up a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) Committee for these two corridors. Raising funds will take time, and would lead to a delay in the commencement of the actual work,” Pathak said. u00a0
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