MANGALORE: The Mangalore City Corporation (MCC) is apparently finding it difficult to cope with the pace of city's growth. The absence of a commercial section to take care of its non-tax revenue is compounding the problems of the civic body.

The functions of the commercial section are now performed by the Revenue Department. Billing for various departments is done by the computer section, which acts as the first point for grievance handling. It is difficult for the section to put in place a Management Information System (MIS) because of its inability to get relevant data from various departments.

Officials feel it will be useful to create a separate Commercial Section. This will rationalise the requirement for staff as well as lead to greater co-ordination among various departments. It will help identify unauthorised properties.

Revenue loss

Naveen D'Souza, Chairman of the Standing Committee for Finance, told The Hindu that because of the lacuna created by the absence of a commercial section, the corporation's financial system is not foolproof. There are functions that cannot be effectively handled by "temporary" arrangements with other departments.

This is the reason why the corporation is losing out on various types of commercial earnings, including "realistic" assessment of commercial properties and channelise its non-tax revenue sources.

V.S. Nayak, Commissioner of the Mangalore City Corporation, said there are some functions that need extra attention but except for large corporations such as the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike, there are no exclusive commercial departments in the civic bodies of Tier II cities such as Hubli-Dharward, Gulburga and Mysore.

Mr. Nayak said there are three types of commercial functions: billing, fieldwork and co-ordination, water supply and sanitation, collection of shop rent, data on self-assessment scheme (SAS), and building permissions and in the revenue section.

In the health section, the commercial functions include issuing trade licences, solid waste management, detection of unauthorised connections, verification of tax submissions, proceedings against property owners and detection of new trades and bringing them under the tax net.

The creation of the commercial section can be done in two phases — first create a sub-section.

The sub-section can later be upgraded into a commercial section. In its recommendations, the Standing Committee on Finance has cited the need for having an exclusive head for the commercial division with knowledge of financial management.

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