Byline: The Goan Network
PANAJI
The Corporation of the city of Panaji (CCP) has estimated a deficit of Rs 6.4 crore for the financial year 2016-17 in the budget. The budget size stands at Rs 54.02 crore.
Salaries and wages account for a large portion of the overall budget. Sanjit Rodrigues, commissioner CCP, said, “We are estimating Rs 18.6 crore towards salaries of regular staff and Rs 3.83 crore towards daily wages and contract staff in the year 2016-17”
Apart from this, there is a provision amounting to Rs 1.02 crore for pension and Rs 1.1 crore towards retirement benefits as well.
This is characteristic of financial situation of Goa also wherein salaries and wages account for a huge portion of the budget size.
House tax, at an estimated Rs 15 crore in 2016-17, accounts for the biggest share of income. CCP is also expecting to earn Rs 3 crore from garbage collection charges, Rs 2.3 crore from octroi, Rs 1.5 crore from advertisement and signboards and Rs 1 crore from mobile tower license fees.
Rodrigues also informed that CCP has not made any provision on account of seventh pay commission.
The revised estimates for 2015-16 also show that CCP’s revenue receipts and expenditure both were a lot lesser than the budgeted figures. CCP had budgeted revenue receipts of Rs 34.7 crore in 2015-16, but it brought this number down to Rs 25.4 crore in revised estimates.
Similarly, CCP had budgeted Rs 31.5 crore of revenue expenditure for 2015-16 which it revised to just Rs 25.3 crore. This shows that CCP is not able to earn as much as it had budgeted and therefore has to even cut down its spending on Panaji.
CCP has been trying to find new sources for generating revenue. The corporation also announced that pay parking will become applicable in Panaji from May 1. CCP has estimated an income of Rs 63 lakhs in 2016-17 from pay parking.
