The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) will seek approval for 90 billion baht for its 2024 budget, promising to revise its policies to keep pace with both global trends and the policies of the new cabinet.
The move came from a meeting of the Bangkok Executive Board regarding the capital's annual budget, led by the governor, Chadchart Sittipunt, on Wednesday.
According to Mr Chadchart, the budget management format would be what he called zero-based budgeting. The method required the BMA to revise every single policy based on its ability to effectively cover the expenses.
"For more efficient project management, every project that has that ability will get a pass. If it does not, we will reconsider the benefits that people might get from a certain project before reintroducing it," he explained.
Mr Chadchart said the board also sees some policies written in a memorandum of understanding on forming a new government signed on Monday as corresponding with some BMA's plans, including the budget management proposal.
Regarding some projects the BMA plans to propose to the new cabinet, those regarding air pollution and green spaces were the highlights, as was the idea of integrating Bangkok Port in Klong Toey with the Laem Chabang deep-sea port in Chon Buri.
Mr Chadchart said those were considered the emergency plans, which means the BMA will will look at national plans to find any beneficial cooperation.
On reviewing his first year of work, Mr Chadchart said that one of the BMA's recent successes has been its community-based policies, of which 190 of 260 are ongoing.
Those successful policies included the Traffy Fondue application, which Mr Chadchart sees as a tool helping authorities focus more on people's complaints.
With this mindset, the application helped solve 206,844 out of 285,771 complaints submitted last year, and there is a plan to expand the complaint categories.
Mr Chadchart also talked about reviewing fire prevention regulations.
