The Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation, or the BMC- the richest civic body in India- announced on February 2nd – presented Rs 27, 258 crore for Mumbai for the FY 2018- 2019. Infrastructural development has always been top notch under BMC and now with many foreign investors investing is real estate as well as in road projects, the region will see further development.
Rs 1500 crore was guaranteed for the Coastal Road project and the Goregaon Mulund Link Road project was allocated a fund of Rs 100 crore. The BMC will spend another Rs 100 crore to build a cycling track along the Tansa pipeline to relieve the commuters of the traffic snarls. Rs 566 crore has been allocated to build storm water drains, which are promised to provide faster respite from the rains and prevent floods. The bottomline is that there has been an increase to Rs 1202 crore in the present year from the Rs 1079 crore in the last year and this difference is huge.
The BMC chief announced in March that it was planning to make use of fixed deposits to develop infrastructure. The BMC has funds of about Rs 69000 crore in banks of which Rs 48,000 crores would be used to fund a number of projects and the BMC would act as the trustee of the remaining Rs 21,000 crores. Since the income from revenue has primarily been dependent on the real estate sector, in the next financial year, withdrawal would be made from special reserves. It can also be said that for the first time in many year, the BMC has spent over 83 percent of the allotted budget for the development activities. The BMC has spent Rs 5052 crores in capital expenditure against the allotted budget of Rs 6111 crore which has been a significant increase from the 31% of last year.
A number of new roads would be constructed and of them the Mumbai Coastal Road is ongoing. Mumbai would also have a eight lane road which will connect the city better to its westerns suburbs and the construction would be over in the next four years. The GMLR project would also start as soon as it would get the environmental clearance. The other municipal corporations in the country can definitely learn a thing or two from BMC and no wonder Mumbai continues to be the most efficient and well planned city of the country.
