Prajakta Kasale prajakta. kasale@ mid- day. com THE richest municipal corporation in the country may be struggling to keep its sources of income intact, but its deposits in the bank continue to skyrocket. Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporationu2019s ( BMC) Fixed Deposits ( FD) reached R 78,668 crore in December 2019. However, thanks to poor spending, the city continues to have weak infrastructure even with such high reserves. A huge population in a small area, high property rates, heavy income from taxes and little expenditure on projects make BMC the richest corporation in Asia and richer than many states in the country. Its allocation of funds, however, remains questionable. Most of BMCu2019s revenue income is spent on salaries, followed by infrastructure and sewage disposal. Roads, bridges, and nullah- widening get the biggest pie of the budget, while health and education are sidetracked. While its income has not gone up in the past five years, spending on various projects has been pegged at only R 10,000 crore u2014 which will be extracted from reserve funds. At the end of the financial year 2011- 12, BMCu2019s FDs amounted to R 23,330 crore. In March 2019, the deposits reached R 76,579 crore. In the 2019- 20 budget, out of R 76,000 crore, R 12,964 crore ( 15 per cent) was reserved for pension and provident fund and R 8,580 ( 10 per cent) crore was deposits paid by contractors. The remaining R 52,000 crore ( 75 per cent) was available for projects. This 75 per cent of the money was allocated under funds such as sinking and contingent fund, land acquisition and development fund, depreciation funds, asset replacement fund, roads and bridges construction development fund, hospital fund, primary school building construction fund, etc. Yet the average spending on projects remained R 4,500 crore per year in the last decade. BMC also received a large amount of interest on FDs u2014 R 2,085 crore in 2018- 19 u2014 which was added to the income, but none of it was used to improve the cityu2019s infrastructure. Civic body gets richer at the cost of projects BMCu2019s FDs in banks see exponential rise u2014 going from R 23k cr in FR 2010- 11, to R 78k crore in Dec 2019; average annual spending on projects remains R 4,500 cr 2011- 12 2010- 11 2012- 13 2013- 14 2014- 15 2015- 16 2016- 17 2017- 18 2018- 19 2019- 20 * till Dec 23,330 26,876 29,972 35,358 43,285 53,235 62,195 72,000 76,579 78,668 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 60,000 70,000 80,000 BMC deposits ( in rupees) graphics / uday mohite

Civic body gets richer at the cost of projects

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