Ghmc trade licence payment

HYDERABAD: The special drive against shops running businesses in the city sans trade licences has paid rich dividends for the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) which has so far collected 63 crore through new/renewal applications. Officials are hoping the figure would touch 100 crore by the end of this fiscal, an almost 50% jump from its usual annual revenue from trade licences. In the last two pandemic-hit years, GHMC earned about 45 crore annually, much less than the annual amount of about 50-60 crore prior to that. "There has been a V-shaped recovery in revenue now unlike the last two years when due to the pandemic many businesses either closed or delayed payments. Around 20% to 30% of businesses failed to pay the fees resulting in revenue shortage earlier," a GHMC revenue wing official told TOI. Officials said that they identified several shops functioning with either expired or no trade licence in several circles such as Musheerabad, Vanasthalipuram, Saroornagar, Khairatabad, Ameerpet, Kukatpally, Kondapur, Nampally, Mehdipatnam, Uppal, Malkajgiri and Kapra. Following the special drive, over 65,000 establishments have so far paid their trade licence fees in the city resulting in the 63 crore revenue. According to GHMC data, there are around 2 lakh businesses in the city and officials are optimistic that they would reach the 100 crore mark this year. So far, around 17,700 new applications were received directly by officials, another five thousand online and...