Hyderabad: 2018 may not be a happy new year for Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation owing to a financial crunch.
The civic body is staring at a cash crisis due to a delay of funds from the state government and in its treasury down to its last Rs 27 crore.
This, when the GHMC needs as much as Rs 110 crore to pay salaries to its employees.
According to highly-placed sources, the GHMC has spent Rs 43.50 crore on regular maintenance of roads and sanitation, Rs 26.98 crore for 40-odd other developmental works, including laying of BT roads, Rs 12.22 crore on footpaths, Rs 3.14 crore on lane marking and Rs 1.10 crore on works like road-cutting restoration, table drains and concreting patches of roads for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit held last month.
It has even spent about Rs 7 crore on works related to beautification etc along major roads for the World Telugu Conference.
Even though wall painting work in the central city was sponsored by several corporate firms under their corporate social responsibility, several others works such as repainting of footpaths, arranging for lighting at LB Stadium, Tank Bund, Necklace Road and other areas turned out to be costly affair for the corporation.
Sources said the government did release pending grants but the money was spent on hosting the two recent events. Now, the civic body is left with just '27 crore in its treasury till it gets the next tranche of the grant.
A senior GHMC official told Deccan Chronicle on the condition of anonymity that the government had released '620 crore pending grants under different heads, including professional tax, motor vehicle tax, property tax on government buildings, entertainment tax, stamp duty, 13 finance commission grants and others.
He said the government had also assured the release of Rs 100 crore every month, but as of now the GHMC has received just '60 crore and the remaining amount will come in only in the last week of December.
The senior official said even after receiving those funds, it have only '77 crore in the treasury when amount required on to clear salaries and pensions is '110 crore.
The GHMC official also said that the delay in government funds will not just leave GHMC bankrupt, but it will find it difficult to pay salaries.
The official said despite this, the government has asked the GHMC to raise Rs 2,500 crore funds in the form of Rupee Term Loan (RTL) and Rs 1,000 crore in municipal bonds to take up infrastructure projects.
“When the annual income of GHMC is Rs 3,000 crore, it would take at least 20 years to repay Rs 3,500 raised through bonds and loans,” he said.
