Special standing committee of Vijayawada Municipal Corporation approves Rs 1,491.93 crore
VIJAYAWADA:The special standing committee of the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) has approved a budget proposal of Rs 1,491.93 crore for the financial year 2018-19, in a meeting held under the leadership of Mayor Koneru Sreedhar recently.
This is for the fourth consecutive year the civic body has approved Rs 1,000 crore plus budget after the TDP-led council came to power, sources in VMC said. The civic body is expecting that Rs 1,491.93 crore as revenue would be earned by the corporation through various sources, while Rs 1,445.36 crore would be spent on executing development works in its limits. In the approved budget estimations, through revenue augmentation, the officials have set a target to earn Rs 233.58 crore (38 per cent) revenue through tax collection and Rs 89.76 crore (15 per cent) through town planning department and other sources.
While in the revenue expenditure, Rs 242.15 crore (50.01 percent) will be spent towards employees’ salaries, Rs 63.10 crore (13.03 per cent) for repairs and maintenance. Very much like the budget drafted in 2017-18, this year also officials have not revised the taxation slab being implemented across the 59 divisions. In addition, the officials have accorded priority in earning revenue through taxes collected from the high-rise buildings, coming up in the city and a proposal to increase the corporators annual development fund to Rs 20 lakh from the present Rs 10 lakh has been approved without any opposition from the standing committee members.
‘’The drafted budget proposals submitted by the officials are public-friendly and there is no chance of any tax revision. Discussions will be conducted in the standing committee meeting and council, before submitting it to the State Government,’’ the Mayor said.