BMC Budget Set To Accelerate Coastal Road, Link Road, & Other Key Projects

A significant portion of funds are anticipated to go towards important infrastructure projects like the Mumbai Coastal Road (Phase 2) and Goregaon Mulund Link Road (GMLR), as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is scheduled to release its budget for the fiscal year 2025–2026 on Tuesday. Without an elected body in the BMC, the municipal commissioner will announce and submit the budget for the third time.

In an earlier January 21 speech at the Indian Express Idea Exchange, municipal commissioner Bhushan Gagrani stated that there is a possibility that the local authorities will potentially adjust the current tax rates.

The budget of Rs 59,954 crore, which was 13.9% more than the budget forecast for 2024–2024, was given by the BMC last year. Last year, Rs 31,774 crore, or 53% of the overall budget, was set aside for capital expenditures.

Nearly 52% of the capital investment has been used up to December 31, 2024, according to BMC statistics. Departments such as solid waste management (SWM), coastal roads, bridges, roadways, and the Water Supply Project (WSP) have seen significant budgetary expenditures.

Since several of these projects are nearing completion, civic officials stated that these important regions will continue to get significant investment in the next budget. The local body’s ongoing initiative to establish seven Sewage Treatment Plants (STP) in Mumbai at a cost of Rs 30,000 crore would be one of the main areas of concentration, according to the authorities.

“When we discuss infrastructure, we just discuss the readily apparent surface infrastructure, but there is a lot of infrastructure that is hidden from view. For instance, we are working on these seven sewage treatment facilities, or STPs. The seven STP plants, totalling about 3,000 MLD, will be finished by 2028. The work began in 2022. Gagrani had stated at the Idea Exchange that all seven of these plants would be finished by 2028, with five of them expected to be finished in 2026 and two possibly a little later.”

The second phase of the coastal road tunnel, which would link Versova in the western suburbs with Bhayander in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), will begin construction this year by the BMC. In 2024, the first section of the Bandra Worli Sea Link (BWSL) between Nariman Point and BWSL went into service. The BMC is also expected to start excavating the two subterranean tunnels for GMLR in August of this year. The local authorities also insisted that they want to complete 70% of the ongoing road concretisation projects in Mumbai by December 31, 2025.

The majority of these infrastructure projects are nearing completion; for example, the coastline road has already obtained the necessary permits, and construction will shortly begin. To ensure that the anticipated major projects don’t encounter any obstacles, significant funds must be directed towards these sectors, according to an official. Additionally, the official insisted that departments such as Solid Waste Management (SWM) would also observe a fair budgetary distribution.

Along with the roads and traffic department, the bridges department, which has worked on the GMLR and coastal road (phase 2) projects, may receive significant cash, the official stated.

Gagrani added that there’s a possibility the BMC would change its current tax rates. The primary source of funding for the local body is the property tax, which is updated every five years. The most recent revision to the tax rate was made by the authorities in 2015. Consequently, BMC’s revenue generating has not increased significantly.

“BMC’s resources have not decreased, but they have also not increased significantly either. The property taxes have not been raised. The water fees have not been increased. In fact, we haven’t hiked anything in the last four years. At the Idea Exchange, Gagrani stated, “There is therefore no net addition into the BMC’s kitty.”

Since we haven’t changed the property and water taxes in four years, we might need to change some of the rates. Water projects require significant investment, particularly for their augmentation. We had a water outage for the last 15 to 20 days, which led to another problem that I discovered after working at BMC. In other ways, water cuts aren’t saving water since they cause issues for the entire distribution system,” he continued.

The SWM projects department has had the highest budget utilisation, with 88.87% of the allotted money being used through the end of December, according to BMC statistics.

Previously, the Coastal Road department, which was nearing the completion of the high-speed corridor’s opening, used the most money at the end of December 31, 2023, at 50.44%. The roads and transportation department came next with 46.05% and the bridges department with 32.08%.

Source: The Indian Express

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