City Kemp News
BBMP has undertaken a major reform for ensuring financial transparency by rolling out Web accounting and rationalization of bank accounts.
For the last 5 years, BBMP had not conducted a financial audit and was working using 900 bank accounts. This maze of accounts ensured that financial transparency did not exist.
BBMP has now closed 875 accounts and moved all it’s finances to only 25 Canara Bank Accounts, thus taking a big step towards financial transparency and auditing.
One of the major reasons why Bengaluru could not have qualified for SMART CITY status is because BBMP had not audited it’s finances.
l BBMP is rolling out a web-based accounting system that updates the inflow and outflow of funds as and when they happen
l The new system allows knowing how much was allocated under each budget head, how much was spent and only approved works will get paid,
l 25 bank accounts will be for 25 different account heads such as property tax, optical fibre cables, commercial licence, advertisement tax, road repairs, town planning, market rent, birth and death certificates, school admission fee, penalty, earnest money deposits, betterment fee and other receipts and will represent each department of the BBMP.
l Joint commissioners of the eight zones of BBMP have been asked to withdraw money from various banks and deposit it in these 25 accounts.
l No more hand-written receipts will be accepted and everything will henceforth be online.
l 900 accounts used to be current account, for which it never got any interest. But now, they will be savings accounts, which will fetch at least four per cent of interest.
