Kochi: The Kochi corporation’s annual budget for the fiscal 2018-19 presented by deputy Mayor T.J. Vinod on Saturday focuses on revenue augmentation measures including proposal for floating municipal bond to fund infra projects to strengthen the ailing exchequer. The budget expects Rs 715.61 crore as income and Rs 594.32 crore as expenditure, making it a surplus budget of Rs 106.26 crore. The deputy Mayor announced a slew of proposals for additional revenue generation to compensate the loss of two major revenue sources, entertainment tax and advertisement tax.
The corporation will initiate steps to float municipal bond in this fiscal itself, mainly to raise money for the ULB share (urban local body share) of the Union government- funded projects like Smart City Mission and AMRUT. Funds from the bonds will also be used for other infra projects’ implementation, said Mr Vinod. A municipal bond is debt security issued by a municipal corporation to finance capital expenditure. It collects the investor payments on a predetermined rate of interest over a stipulated time period.
The other major budget proposals to augment revenue are value capture financing – a public financing method, service sub tax for utilities (aimed at additional revenue of Rs 10 crore), service charge for Union government establishments (Rs 10 crore), supervisory fee for hoardings and bill boards (Rs 3 crore), increase in waste treatment processing feee (Rs 2 crore), regularisation of unauthorised buildings constructed before July 2017 (Rs 5 crore), increase in ownership transfer and ownership certificate (Rs 2 crore), bringing more firms under employment tax purview (Rs 8 crore), special charge for hospitals (Rs 1 crore), star charge for hotels (Rs 2 crore), tax for tourist boats (Rs 50 lakh), property tax revision (Rs 20 crore), maintenance grant from government (Rs 8 crore), revision of D&O licence for hostels, day care centres (Rs 50 lakh) and user fee for waste collection from commercial firms (Rs 4.50 crore).
The deputy Mayor made budgetary provision for upgrading several roads to bitumen macadam and bitumen concrete standards. Land will be acquired for completing the development of major roads like Thammanam – Pullepady Road, Palluruthy 40-feet road, Subhash Chandra Bose Road, Emmanuel Palli Road and Goshree – Mamangalam Road. Other works include construction of footpaths, elevated walkways at busy junctions, a new marine walkway from Marine Drive to Rajendra Maidan, cycle track, development of junctions, a new signage policy, multilevel car parking-cum-commercial complex at Kacheripady, modernisation of canal, drainage and boat jetties.
Meanwhile, some of the proposals which have been regular in the annual budgets like She lodge, women’s hostel, slaughterhouse at Mattancherry, modern public toilets, biodiversity register and replacing street lights with energy efficient LED bulbs have appeared this year too. The deputy Mayor has announced couple of innovative proposals for making the city greener. Clean air Kochi project, carbon credit city, environmental information system, city biodiversity index, biodiversity garden, feasibility study for mangrove park, special squad for planting new trees and pruning big trees, net zero energy buildings (building with zero energy consumption), solar energy system in government offices and solar street lights. However, unlike previous years, the budget didn’t have any big ticket projects.
