Team Herald
VASCO: A nearly Rs 3.6 crore ‘revenue surplus’ budget was presented by Mormugao MMC Chairperson Nandadeep Raut, on Friday and the total budget for running the municipality in 2020-21 is nearly Rs 15.37 crore.
The municipality expects to get revenue of Rs 11 crore from capital account receipts; while its capital account expenditure during the financial year 2020-2021 is Rs 35 crore. This amount will be spent on development works taken under 14th Finance Commission Fund.
Further, the MMC expected revenue under the suspense account budget head is Rs 285.93 lakh. This is an increase of 9.05 % as compared to the Financial Year 2019-20, when the municipality earned only Rs 262.19 lakh under this head.
And under the suspense account expenditure, the MMC plans to spend Rs 829.50 lakh in Financial Year 2020-2021. This expenditure includes release of retirement benefits to the retired staff, release of performance guarantee, security deposit and other suspense account payments.
Raut said, “If we utilise this Rs 15 crore for developmental works, we will get more funds from government.”
When asked why opposition councillors were not present for this budget meeting, Raut replied, “All councillors were informed two days ago, booklets were given to them about budget 2020-2021, but only 14 councillors were present at the meeting”.
Giving reason for skipping the budget meeting, ex-chairperson Kritesh Gaonkar said that after going through the budget he felt that the budget is fictitious, exaggerated and unrealistic.
“If we see the 2019-20 year recovery, it is Rs 107 lakh and in a month’s time the chairperson is expecting Rs 53 lakh recovery to happen. So in total Rs 1.61 crore will be recovered. For the year 2020-21, Rs 10 crore has been shown as budget recovery. Looking at this exaggerated figure, I feel the budget is not surplus,” he explained.
“If the budget is surplus, then, why there is a problem every month for releasing salary of the municipal labourers and staff?” he questioned.
