the goan I network
MARGAO
The Cuncolim Municipal Council has been literally caught napping on the question of utilisation of grants with the audit coming out with a report that the civic body not only failed to utilise the basic grant, but also failed to avail performance grant under the 14th Finance Commission.
A glance at the audited report for the period 2017-18 and 2018-19 reveals that while the CMC was in receipt of basic grant under the 14th Finance Commission to the tune of Rs 55.95 crore, during the period from August 8, 2016 to June 19, 2019, the civic body had utilised only Rs 0.83 crore during 2016-18.
“Thereafter, the fund was not utilised. The CMC did not submit the utilisation certificate to the government against the utilisation of any installments, even though the State government was releasing the second and subsequent basic grant to the council in violation of the 14th Finance Commission guidelines. Resultantly, there was an accumulation of 14th FC grants in the council accounts and instead of utilising the fund, the council parked it in fixed deposits in the bank and was accumulating interest,” the report compiled by the Indian Audit and Accounts Department stated.
The CMC was also caught napping on the failure of the council to avail the performance grant under the 14th Finance Commission. During scrutiny of records, it was noticed that the Municipality failed to get its annual accounts audited by chartered accountant, resulting in non-submission of the proposal for availing performance grant. “Due to non-fulfilment of criteria, municipality failed to get performance grant amounting to Rs 44 lakh despite the amount being earmarked by the State government. Further, Municipality’s own revenues decreased from Rs 266 lakh in 2017-18 to Rs 121 lakh in 2018-19, making the municipality ineligible to avail the performance grants aggregating Rs 56 lakh for the award year 2018-19,” the report stated.
The report further states that the total loss of performance grants under the FFC to the municipality comes out Rs 150 lakh for the period 2016-19. “It is pertinent to note that unless the municipality made earnest efforts to increase its own revenues over the preceding years, public service level benchmarks and gets its accounts audited for submission to the government/department in time, it ran the risk of losing out on further incentive of Rs 74 lakh for the remaining award period of 2019-20.
