 "SDMC proposes minor hike in property tax; new professional tax")
Emphasising on exploring new avenues of income generation and cutting down expenditure, municipal commissioner Punit Kumar Goyal also proposed scrapping old-age pension to be paid by the civic body in the next financial year.
Revised estimates of 2015-16 and the proposed estimates for financial year 2016-17 were presented by him, even as the SDMC said it was the first deficit budget for it since its inception in 2012 due to high expenditure vis-a-vis commensurate income generated.
"In order to increase revenue several measures including professional tax imposition, increase in property tax in the range of 1-2 per cent, and implementation of Municipal Valuation Committee report for revising property taxes, are proposed for the year 2016-17," he said.
"Despite all these measures, the proposed budget estimates for 2016-17 shows a deficit of Rs 200 crore," he said. As per the revised budget estimates for 2015-16, the revenue target of Rs 3,938.72 crore has been revised to Rs 3,316.39 crore due to revenue shortfall of around Rs 600 crore.
The revenue generation proposed for 2016-17 is estimated to be Rs 3,857.56 crore which is up by approximately Rs 500 crore as compared to the current fiscal, the commissioner said.
The 2015-16 revised budget estimates showed a deficit of about Rs 199 crore.
Stressing on actual estimation of income, Goyal said that last year the income was "overestimated" and expenditure was increased by about Rs 1,000 crore which has affected the current year budget. The commissioner also proposed spending 21 per cent of the total budget for 2016-17 on education, while an equal percentage has been proposed as expenditure on sanitation.