Its ad-vantage for firms as GHMC does a U-turn

HYDERABAD: All is not well with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) when it comes to collection of advertisement tax on glow and neon sign boards on commercial establishments in Greater Hyderabad limits.Realising that it was unable to collect the tax on sign boards on its own, in a U-turn, the GHMC has now decided to outsource the job to private agencies for the next three years. It has invited private agencies to submit their bids.It may be recalled that the GHMC had given the job of collecting tax from shopkeepers to a private agency USM Business Systems a couple of years ago. But after the shopkeepers and traders raised objections alleging that the agency was levying an abnormal amount of advertisement tax and following the intervention of the judiciary, the GHMC had begun collecting the tax by itself from April last year.But GHMC was not able collect the advertisement taxes due to various factors including staff crunch that resulted in poor collections and could not achieve the fixed target which forced the officials to invite individual firms, joint ventures and consortiums to take up the job.Speaking to City Express, GHMC officials confirmed the corporation’s decision to outsource the collection of advertisement tax in Greater Hyderabad limits. The interested parties have been asked to submit their technical and commercial bids before February 14. The bidders  can procure the Request for Proposal (RFP) forms from January 11 to 21.The private agency, which ever wins the bid, will have to pay Rs 5 crore per annum for a period of three years to the GHMC. The GHMC will not pay service charges up to Rs 5 crore for each financial year. The bidders are invited to quote the percentage, for anything over and above the collection of Rs 5 crore as their service charges.The officials said that successful bidder has to deploy sufficient number of electronic handled POS (EHPOS) machines with GPRS connectivity and computer hardware and software and should engage sufficient manpower for the operation of the project.