Mumbai: The BMC – which is proudly referred to as the country's richest civic body – has clawed Rs 4,000 crore from its fixed deposits (FDs) as no additional revenue source could be augmented.
From Rs 92,636 crore in January 2022, the FDs dipped to Rs 89,353 crore by September 2022. The whopping amount of Rs 4,000 crore – including the Rs 2,500 crore premium given to the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation – was spent on mega projects such as the Coastal Road, construction of bridges and revamp of stormwater drains before monsoon. So the civic body now has Rs 88,000 crore in its FDs.
BMC 23-24 budget
Recently, civic chief Iqbal Singh Chahal presented a Rs 52,619 crore budget for the financial year 2023-24. The revenue income in the new fiscal is expected to be Rs 33,290 crore from various sources.
Besides dipping into its coffer to raise Rs11,615 crore special funds, the BMC will arrange for Rs5,970 crore from internal temporary transfer. “The FDs are nothing but the money of citizens. So what's wrong when it's spent on infrastructure projects,” said the senior civic official. These FDs are kept in various state-run and a few private banks. The BMC had Rs26,876 crore in FDs in the financial year 2011-12. A three-fold rise was seen in FDs which increased to Rs72,000 crore in 2018.
The funds were stagnant between 2019 and 2022 (Covid years) but they swiftly rose to Rs92,636 crore by end of January as huge revenue was generated from premium through development work. Other sources of income for the BMC are compensation against octroi.
FDs linked to infra projects
Rs 51,147.36 cr
FDs kept in PF, pension and gratuity funds
Rs 26,283 cr
Annual interest earned
Rs 1,500 cr
Three-fold rise since 2018
Rs 72,000 cr
