Thiruvananthapuram Corporation’s Plan expenditure at 48.45% with a month remaining in the financial year

With just over a month remaining in the financial year, the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation’s Plan expenditure stands at 48.45%, placing it in the third position among the six Corporations for expenditure. A total of 184 bills from the Corporation, amounting to ₹26.22 lakhs, are pending in the treasury. Out of the total plan allocation of ₹240.83 crore, the civic body has till Tuesday spent an amount of ₹116.68 crore.

Among the Corporations, Thrissur leads with 55.68% expenditure, followed by Kollam with 51.24%. The Kozhikode and Kochi Corporations have spent only 45.16% and 42.21% respectively, while Kannur lags behind with 38.68% expenditure. The block panchayats are leading in fund utilisation with an average of 50.72%, followed by district panchayats with an average of 47.89%. The total pending bills in the treasury across all local bodies amounts to ₹287.86 crore. The plan expenditure across all local bodies in the State stands at 43.66%, which is an improvement on the 39.18% recorded at the same time last year.

Most of the urban local bodies are lagging behind in the utilisation of the Million Plus Cities Challenge Fund provided by the 15th Finance Commission for Urban Agglomerations. The funds are meant to be utilised for solid waste management projects jointly by corporations along with municipalities adjacent to them. The Thiruvananthapuram Corporation and adjacent urban bodies have utilised only 4% of the ₹41 crore allocated to them. Quite a few of the projects under the Urban Agglomerations scheme, including a biomedical incineration plant and a faecal sludge treatment plant, are multi-year projects which could partly explain the low utilisation.

The preparation of the annual plan has been happening quite early before the end of the previous financial year since 2017-18, allowing the local bodies an entire year for implementation. Yet the old problem of passing all the bills together at year end persists. In recent years, as much as 30% of bills of some of the corporations were passed in the last month.