Mumbai's civic body, the
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), on Friday, February 2, announced its annual budget allocation for fiscal year 2024-25 at ₹59,954 crore. This is the highest allocation ever with a capital expenditure of Rs Rs 31,774.59 crore and revenue expenditure of ₹28,121.94 crore.
BMC, which is also India's richest civic body, has slated various infrastructure projects like the Mumbai coastal road, its extensions, Goregaon twin tunnel and others along with beautification projects. The
annual budget is 10.5% higher than the last year.
BEST EVs
In a bid to electrify public transportation, the BMC has allotted a total budget provision of ₹928.65 crore as a grant to the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST). Of the total, ₹800 crore is to meet the expenditure on infrastructural development and purchase of capital equipment, purchase of new buses on wet lease basis, day-to-day expenses and payment of Diwali bonuses.
For procurement and deployment of 2000 electric buses within Mumbai, the BMC will be funding ₹128.65 crore. The rest of the funding for the project, which has been pegged at ₹2,573 crore is expected from the World Bank in the form of a soft loan.
Coastal Road Project
Two of the four packages of the behemoth infrastructure project, a part of the Mumbai Coastal Road will be open to public by February end. The project could fully be open from May. A budget provision of ₹2,900 crore has been proposed to meet the compensation of the Worli fishermen along with installation of CCTV, Video Managing System, Emergency Communication Systems.
The BMC will also be making an underground parking area at the Coastal Road Project along with a green belt for recreational facilities.
Other prominent projects include concretisation of roads. As per the budget document, about 209 km roads are proposed to be improved in cement concrete in the ensuing year 2024-25. Prominent roads like Veer Nariman Road, Kuprej Road in City, Dayaldas Road, Link Road, Goregaon Mulund Link Road, Road towards Goregaon in Western Suburb, Bajiprabhu Deshpande Marg, Chheda Nagar Road No.1, P. Somani Marg, Raheja Vihar Road in Eastern Suburbs are proposed for improvement in 2024-25.
Climate Budget
The BMC will start a 'Green Budget Book' which will be a dedicated climate budget for the city. This will have initiative for systematically reducing emissions and enhancing climate resilience.
The book will have initiatives like developing gardens, implementimg MCAP strategies alongwith projects like Renewable Hybrid Energy and waste to energy plans.
This comes as the city has been struggling with worst air quality ever.
Education budget
The education budget has been set at ₹3,497 crore, up from last year's ₹3,370 crore. This year, the budget plan includes a ₹4.5 crore provision to establish an innovative mathematics and science centre in primary sections of 25 schools on pilot basis. Along with this the BMC will provide modern school dictionary to around 1.7 lakh students from classes V to X, establish open gymnasiums in 200 schools, preserve documents in digitized formats, and procure medium-wide grammar books for students in classes IX and X.
