BDA's budget soars, progress dwindles

With just about 11 per cent financial progress in 2010-11, the BDA might have utterly failed in achieving its own budgetary targets, but the BDA board has recently approved an outlay of Rs 5,067.65 crore for 2011-12 which is a whopping Rs 4,372 crore more than the revised estimate of the previous year.

The BDA has also set an ambitious revenue target of Rs 5,074.02 crore which is Rs 4,661 crore more than the previous year’s revised estimate.

The Authority has announced to take up a number of new infrastructure projects, including two level grade separators at Nayandahalli off Bangalore-Mysore road, eight road works in BBMP area, providing infrastructure to Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) along outer ring road, four elevated roads, road over drains and re-development of four markets in the current year. It has also promised to complete the long-delayed Arkavathy layout and take up new layouts — Nada Prabhu Kempe ­Gowda, Dr Shivaramakarantha, and Peripheral Ring Road (PRR) project.

However, the BDA was not able to implement any of six major projects it had planned last year, including two new layouts - Nada Prabhu Kempe Gowda and Dr Shivaramakarantha.

Other projects planned by the authority which did not materialise last year included Mega city infrastructure projects like grade separators, parking lots, improving traffic routes and undertaking lake rejuvenation projects. The new layouts and PRR project were approved by the government about four years ago. Though the Government had approved the mega city projects with a provision of Rs 1,328 crore in 2008, the Authority has been able to spend just Rs 258 crore so far.

The main reason for the Authority’s budget to go haywire for the last few years is its inability to form the long-pending new layouts and auction sites — the two major sources of revenue for the BDA. It was expecting to mobilise a total of Rs 2,500 crore by formation and distribution sites in new layouts (Rs 1,401 crore) and auctioning of sites in old layouts (Rs 1,100 crore) in 2010-11. But all it was able to raise was a paltry Rs 150 crore.

The BDA was able to mobilise a total of Rs 413 crore revenue against the budget target of Rs 3,650 crore and spent Rs 695 crore against Rs 3,643 crore expenditure target, thus ending up with a huge deficit in 2010-11. BDA now wants to  make good the huge deficit out of pre-closure of fixed deposits it has in various banks. The progress made in 2010-11 is lower compared to 2009-10 fiscal. The financial progress achieved by the BDA in 2010-11 is just 11.33 per cent.

Nevertheless, the BDA has again listed all these and some new infrastructure projects in the current year’s budget.  It hopes to mobilise Rs 1,453 crore by formation and distribution of sites in new layouts and another Rs 1,405 crore from collection of registration fee, cesses and others.