Team Herald
VASCO: With the promise to recover all its outstanding dues from vital installations like Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), besides recovery of the house tax for the year 2017-18 from its jurisdiction, the Mormugao Municipal Council on Tuesday passed a surplus budget of Rs 1.59 crore.
Council budget for 2017-18 besides few other important issues were discussed during the special council meeting that was chaired by MMC Chairperson Deepak Naik on Tuesday.
While discussing the draft budget, Naik informed the council that like last year, the MMC has decided to place more stress on recovering outstanding dues that keep increasing year after year. He said that MMC has leased out its land to two oil companies and in form of land revenue, these two oil companies including IOCL and HPCL have dues of about 10 crore. Similarly, MMC has projected recovery of Rs 4-5 crore from the house tax from all the 25 wards.
“This time we have set our targets to put more emphasis on recovery of dues and thus we have constituted two teams of staff in order to recover the outstanding dues. Also, as directed by the new Director of Municipal Administration J Ashok Kumar, we have decided to crack down on the tax defaulters and submit compliance report in a month’s time. We have decided to initiate legal action against the defaulters and taking into consideration the amount of outstanding dues, we have passed a surplus budget for the next financial year,” Naik told reporters.
Meanwhile, during budget discussion, Naik also informed the council that in the last financial year except for the development grants, the MMC achieved success in getting all the grants from the government.
He said that presently the council has maintained a healthy financial position and thus about Rs 1 crore have been kept as reserve funds for employees provident funds.
After a lengthy discussion, the council unanimously passed surplus budget for 2017-18.
Meanwhile, the council also unanimously passed the revised plan for Sada market for which the works have been taken up by GSUDA.
The council also has decided to renew the work order issued to the signature project at Chief Officers Bungalow land.
