COIMBATORE: With a little over two months left in the financial year 2023-24, the Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC) collected just 53.82% of the property tax demand of Rs 518.69 cr as on Monday. About 24.66% of this includes collection of arrears.
CCMC had grabbed the first position among 20 corporations in the state (excluding Greater Chennai Corporation) in property tax collection in the FY 2022-23, followed by Kancheepuram and Erode in the second and third spots. Sources say the civic body collected around 93% (Rs 352 cr) of the current year demand and 49% of arrear demands (Rs 70 cr) out of the overall demand of Rs 520 cr in FY 22-23. But this year, it may not reach anywhere close to these figures.
Of the five zones in the CCMC, the central zone has contributed the highest collection with 64.57%, followed by North (59.86%), East (57.23%) West (56.86%) and South (52.34%) zones.
While sources in CCMC attributed the poor collections to non-staff shortage as bill collectors have been assigned for other works including Makkaludan Mudhalvar scheme work, the commissioner refuted the charge. Admitting that collections were not as expected, CCMC commissioner M Sivaguru Prabakaran said, “There are no specific reasons for the dip in tax collection.
We have started conducting special camps for tax collection across the city now. We shall improve the tax figures in the next month and we will mop up the tax amount. Allegations that collections are yet to pick up because of assigning bill collectors to Makkaludan Mudhalvar scheme works are not true.”