City revenue

Every city has numerous opportunities to generate revenue which can help improve the city. For example, cities can generate revenue by renting vacant land, advertisement space on government land, building or vehicles, rent out vehicles and machinery. Similarly, by constructing markets, offices and renting out land for special services like parking, concerts, sport events, amusement parks, wedding halls etc cities can also generate revenue.

Cities can also generate income from property tax, sales and services taxes, while street vendor licence, parking tickets and fines are other major revenue sources. If a city can effectively manage all these revenue sources then they can generate enough income to upgrade infrastructure and improve the city as the population rises. Therefore, I think the government should set up a regulatory authority for city revenue generation. The main tasks of the authority would be to identify sources of revenue for cities, create standardised laws, rules and procedures that can be adopted by cities, monitor revenue streams of all cities, regular audit, provide alternative resolution services to cities and contractors/ renters and continuously help cities increase their revenue.

Engr Shahryar Khan Baseer

Peshawar