Guest column: Bengaluru's civic agencies are badly managed financially

Bengaluru’s civic agencies are badly managed financially and the cry for reforms is only growing louder. Our study on the Quality of Financial Management of BMTC, BWSSB and BDA, recommends that reform measures like preparation and adherence to a five-year medium term fiscal plan (MTFP), realistic budgets, strengthening of audit functions by calling in independent Chartered Accountants and making mandatory disclosures of their budgets, annual audited accounts, details regarding civic and capital works on their websites. Seeking citizen inputs through the year on budget allocations for neighbourhood-level projects will also help financial stability and accountability

A five-year MTFP will not only provide an overall long term financial plan that will focus on the funds required to service their obligations, but also contribute to financial stability. Agencies can focus on revenue enhancement streams with the targets laid out in the MTFP, and also plan their capex based on their revenue generation capacity. Since, most of the agencies are not in a position to fund their capex, there is a need to raise external funds which can be done by issuing Municipal Bonds.

The issuance of municipal bonds requires credibility in financial statements, which can be attained by empanelling independent Chartered Accountants. Applying The Karnataka Municipal Accounting and Budgeting Rules, 2006, across all the civic agencies will help in financial stability and uniformity in presentation of the financial and operational performance. Transparency and citizen participation will boost the public’s confidence in these civic agencies, which is severely lacking at the moment.

The writer is Manager, Public Record of Operations and Finance (PROOF), Janaagraha