SDMC claims financial viability, says no to loans

The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) is busy drawing a strategy to stop borrowing funds from the Delhi government from next year. Having achieved financial viability for itself, the civic agency is planning to formally write to the Delhi government to delete all the heads under which it allocates loans to the corporation in its annual budget.

‘As Delhi government allocates loans for the corporations in its annual budget they transfer it in our account without demand. It is necessary to prevent them from allocating more funds to us for 2013-14,’ a senior officer of SDMC finance department said.

‘In 2012-13, the government transferred a loan amount of Rs 72 crore into our account without any prior information, which we have already repaid,’ the officer added. The corporation had a loan of Rs 810 crore under the plan head as part of its share from erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). Apart from the plan head, Delhi government sanctions loan for civic 

agencies under wage and means too.

‘We have already written to the Delhi government that we don’t require any wage and means loan for 2013-14,’ SDMC commissioner Manish Gupta told Millennium Post. ‘The corporation has repaid Rs122 crore out of the Rs 255 crore loan taken under the ‘wage and means’ category it had inherited from MCD. We have planned to make the corporation in the next five years,’ Gupta added.

The corporation has already rejected an offer of Rs 620 crore as loan from the government under the ‘loan and advances’ category. ‘They transferred a loan amount of Rs 60 crore in our account in April 2012 under loan and advances category which we have repaid recently and asked them not to transfer any more loan without our demand,’ a source said.

On SDMC financial health, director press and information said, ‘We are now able to pay salary to our employees in the first week of every month which was delayed for over three months in the MCD period. The payments of contractors which were delayed by over three years are being made within three months.’