On Friday, Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai, Ajoy Mehta presented the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) budget of Rs 30,000 crore. The budget of the richest Municipal Corporation of Asia is widely known for its comparison to the budgets of smaller states of the country. The estimated expenditure of Mumbai is almost double of Goa and more than that of the GDPs of many North Eastern states like Meghalaya, Sikkim, Nagaland or Arunachal Pradesh.
Interestingly, the role of the Mayor of Mumbai is ceremonial and the executive power is vested in the commissioner. The urban local body takes care of the sewage system, the school divisions, power companies, roads, and other aspects of local infrastructure in the city. The Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) and Mumbai Fire Brigade are autonomous organizations under BMC.
The municipal body presented its highest ever budget of 37,052 crore rupees in 2016-17 but it was reduced to 25,141 crore rupees to have a more ‘realistic’ approach. Earlier, it had become a norm to inflate the budget by showing high capital spending. But the capital expenditure could not materialize and at the end of the year, total spending remained somewhere between 20 to 40 percent. Thus, Ajoy Mehta slashed the budget and included only those projects which can get materialized in the budgeted expenditure.
The MNC budget crossed 30,000 crore rupees for the fourth time with an expected expenditure of 30,686 crore rupees in FY 20. The Capital expenditure target which was slashed considerably in achieving a ‘realistic’ approach of 2016-17 was again increased by 11,480 crore rupees. Revenue expenditure will take a major toll on the spending of BMC and is expected to increase by 22 percent to reach 19,206 crore rupees in 2019-20.
As per a research by the rating agency, CARE, the major sources of income for the BMC are Goods and Service Tax compensation, property tax receipts, water and sewerage charges, receipts from the sale of extra floor space to developers and investments account. BMC expects to earn more than 9,000 crore rupees from GST compensation itself. The municipal body used to charge ‘octroi’ before the implementation of GST. Moreover, Property Tax is another major source of income for BMC and it aims more than 5,000 crore rupees for FY 2020. Another 3,454 crore rupees will come from the allocation of the Mumbai Development Plan, 2034.
The capital expenditure in Mumbai is 24,985 crore rupees of which almost half is to be kept aside for payments of salaries and pensions of almost 1 lakh BMC employees. Apart from this, the major portion of capital expenditure of BMC will be allocated to the coastal road project, traffic operations, water supply, sewage disposal, solid waste management, and health spending. “Since the work on Coastal Road Project has been started, we will increase the provision from the Rs 1,500 crore allotted last year. Budgetary provision for Goregaon-Mulund Link Road is also expected to increase, as only one more clearance is needed, which is expected by this month. Besides, the MSDP projects that require over Rs 15,000 crore and two water supply tunnels (Chembur to Parel and Chembur to Trombay), which need more than Rs 2000 crore, are also likely to increase the budgetary provision as contracts to carry out the work have been awarded,” said a BMC official. “The health budget will be increased from last year’s Rs 3,636 crore. Other projects like cycling track, Powai to Veravali water supply tunnel, procurement of new fire fighting equipments, Mithi River Rejuvenation, reconstruction of hospitals may also see rise in budget allocation,” he added.
BMC is the richest municipal corporation in the country with revenue receipt of 24,984 crore rupees. Interestingly, it is six times greater than the Pune Municipal Corporation which is the second richest MNC in India. The Pune Municipal Corporation has a revenue of 4,023 crore rupees while the New Delhi Municipal corporation gets revenue of 3,572 crore rupees.
Although, the BMC is not as self-reliant as Pune Municipal Corporation and New Delhi Municipal Corporation with both the MNCs generating 91 and 92 percent of spending through revenue consecutively. On the other hand, the BMC gets only 62 percent revenue of its spending.
Richest Municipal Corporation In Asia
One of the biggest puzzles that emerged was that Mumbai’s budget of 11,952 rupees was spent on others. The total budget was Rs 3,863 crore for providing road repairs and construction in the city.
The capital expenditure of Mumbai amounts to 24,985 crore rupees, half of which is used for the payment of salaries and pensions of 1 lakh BMC employees. A large part of BMC’s capital expenditure is on coastal road projects, transport, water supply, sanitation, waste management and health expenditure. The annual budget allocates a fixed deposit of 51,000 rupees to the BMC to provide for urban welfare, but this money is not used.
BMC Budget corresponds to the budgets of 10 municipal enterprises in India such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Nagpur, Nashik and Patna. Revenue expenditure is taking a heavy toll on spending and BMC is expected to rise 22 percent to 1,920.6 crore rupees in 2019-20. BMC spends 50 percent of its budget on salaries and pensions of 11 lakh employees.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Richest Municipal Corporation In Asia, has announced its 2016-17 budget. The municipal body had presented its budget for the same year at 370.52 rupees, which was the highest figure ever, but it was reduced to 25.141 rupees as a more realistic approach. The budget of the Brihanamumbai Municipal Corporations for the 2019-20 financial year broke the 30,000 rupee mark for the second time in three years as the MCGM real estate revenues, one of its largest source of revenue, fell.
The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, the municipal body that governs the capital of Mumbai, Maharashtra, is Richest Municipal Corporation In India and Asia. MCGM is also the only urban company in India to provide four medical colleges and a dental school, including the newly established Hindu Hrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Medical College in Juhu in September 2015, which has a corresponding population of 150 MBBS students. The Municipal Corporation Greater Mumbai (MCG), also known as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is considered the Richest municipal corporation in Asia.
This is just one of several examples of simple interventions that he has noticed and proposed on an individual basis, in which companies and administrative staff on study trips submit tour reports on their learning and how it can be used to improve the governance of the city.
The BMC did not share the doctors “views with the Shiv Sena group, but when he was chairman of the education committee in his second term, his administrators shared his approach of correcting wrongs by getting it right and doing wrong to those who had wronged.
In September 2020, the Praja White Paper on Mumbai Health showed that between 2017 and 2019, the number of vacancies in medicine and paramedics in cities increased by 47% and BMCs forfeited 18% of their income for health.
Every human being who takes care of his needs in the sea is directly facing the pollution of the sea. In the 60s and 70s, 30 percent of the BMC budget was spent on health. But Ajoy Mehta cut the budget to accommodate projects that accounted for only half of the budgeted expenditure. When it became clear that vaccines were in short supply, a Sena MP and four-time chair of the BMC Standing Committee (the BMC was ruled by the Senate for 24 years) proposed that the company break its fixed deposit of a whopping 79,000 rupees and buy vaccines for Mumbaikars at a price of less than 10%.
Mumbai has always been indifferent to BMC elections, and turnout in previous polls has been dismal. In the 2012 municipal elections, turnout in the city was 44 percent.
The financial capital of Mumbai, with a total wealth of $950 billion, was named among the 15 richest cities, with New York topping the list, the report said. It said that Among the 15 cities, the San Francisco Bay Area, Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai and Sydney have been the fastest-growing regions in terms of growth in wealth over the past 10 years.
With increasing population and local demand from citizens, the late Annasaheb Magar founded the Pimpri Transport Service in 1974 for the benefit of the people of the city. He was elected the first leader of Pimppri Chinchwad Municipal Council. The corporation title was used for the districts during the Norman conquest and later under the Municipal Administration Act 2001. Under the 2001 Act, the districts were renamed cities and their bodies became town councillors.
