Smart City Mission: Mapping of Panaji to jack up revenue for CCP

the goan I networkrPANAJI r rAlso, various projects have been taken up under Smart City Mission which include municipal taxes and fee improvement- improvement in property tax collection study, generating revenue through value capturing finance tools for smart city development and improvement in revenue from advertisement tax. rSpeaking about the same, Former Panaji MLA and Chief Mentor of the Imagine Panaji Smart City Development Limited (IDSCPL) Siddharth Kunkalienkar informed: “To make our municipal administration more efficient, we have taken up various projects under Smart City Mission, one of them being municipal taxes and fee improvement- improvement in property tax collection study for Panaji city. This is aimed at tapping municipal tax from all sources within the CCP jurisdiction. rExplaining further CEO Swayandipta Pal Chowdhary said, “What the municipal taxes project would entail is to increase the coverage for the under assessed and un-assessed properties at least up to 90 per cent. That is the aim of the project. Without any enhancement of taxes, we’ll ensure mapping of all under-assessed as well as unassessed properties. So it is expected that current revenue of CCP is going to increase multi-fold by using this smart interventions under this project.” r“There are already a number of assessments done by the CCP. Now the idea is to carry out a 100 per cent door- to-door survey and equip the CCP by smart technologies to ensure that the last property comes under the tax radar. And to ensure that the properties are being assessed at the correct rate and then to ensure that it is accordingly being updated in books of records of CCP”, he said adding, “This is basically cross verification with data sets form multiple sources including utility services.” r “As far as the advertisement tax goes we will ensure that there is a common policy which will be approved by various levels of the government and the CCP, so that if any advertisements are seen springing up in the city they are completely curtailed down. Approvals will have to be taken so that only CCP approved ads seen in the city”, he said. Kuncalienker also informed that they are aiming at completing various projects under AMRUT in August. r“One of these signature projects is the restoration of the footbridge near Mary Immaculate School. Nonetheless, the second phase of AMRUT projects has also been approved by the Centre. This includes parts of Ribandar wherein a community hall, a fish, meat and vegetable market, jogging track, bus stop at Patto-Ribandar junction have been approved.” rHe also informed that projects under third phase of AMRUT are being finalised. rMeanwhile, CCP Commissioner Dipak Desai, who was also a part of the briefing, said, “As far as tax collection is concerned, our main problem are the government properties which include residential apartments and State and Central government offices. As per our Act, there should be a special authority appointed for the assessment. That is not done. That is the main reason why percentage of arrears has gone up.”