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The civic body is all set to table a deficit budget for the sixth consecutive year but the silver lining in it is the hope for better basic amenities.
The draft of Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC)’s budget for the 2013-14 fiscal with a deficit of around Rs 29 crore would be tabled in the meeting of its board on Friday. The quantum of deficit in the last budget was Rs 49 crore, Rs 20 crore more than the budget to be tabled for the next financial year. A PMC official attributed the dip in deficit to the projected rise of the civic body’s revenue in the next fiscal.
According to the draft, the total expected revenue has been pegged at Rs 332 crore. It includes Rs 128 crore, available as opening balance. The estimated expenditure, on the other hand, is Rs 361 crore.
“The draft of the budget for the upcoming fiscal 2013-14 has been approved by the empowered standing committee and it would be tabled in the PMC board meeting slated on March 15. This year’s budget has been made with a perspective of holistic development of the city with quality civic services to the residents,” said a senior official of the PMC.
Residents of the city can expect traffic signals, municipal library and cultural programmes among several other facilities in the next financial year. The civic body has made allocations on these heads for the first time.
Considering the acute crisis of drinking water, the civic body would be installing two hand pumps in each ward in the next fiscal.
A sum of around Rs 58 crore would be set aside for schemes related to the uplift of urban poor and women. Another Rs 1.5 crore would be spent on the maintenance of streetlights.
In a bid to improve its functioning and smooth delivery of civic services to the residents, Rs 5 crore has been allocated to e-governance in the draft budget of the civic body.
The draft budget projects a jump of approximately Rs 105 crore in the civic body’s revenue in the next fiscal. For this financial year, the expected revenue was pegged at Rs 227 crore. For the next fiscal, the projected resource has been increased to around Rs 332 crore.
“Several new policies, including Bihar Municipal Property Tax (Assessment, Collection and Recovery), Rules, 2013, Tax and Non-tax Recovery Regulations, 2012, Bihar Commercial Towers and Related Structures Rules, 2011 and Patna Municipal Corporation (Grant of Permission for Display of Advertisement and Similar Devices), 2012, are expected to jack up the income of the civic body,” said the PMC official.
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