E-payment for govt contracts in J&K next fiscal

In order to reduce corruption and bring transparency in the development works in Jammu & Kashmir, Finance Minister Muzaffar Hussain Baig on Monday said a new tendering process and electronic payment system for government contracts has been formulated that would be put into place during the next fiscal.

Spelling out the measures for the good governance in his Budget speech, Baig said that corruption had become an issue of major political and economic significance in recent years.

"In a systemic sense, corruption is the result of either shortages, be it of commodities or of money. The second is when administrators have discretionary control without terminal accountability. These issues need to be addressed in a systematic manner."

Baig said that the public procurement, the purchase of goods and services by governments and state-owned enterprises was highly exposed to corruption.

"Both public and private actors in the procurement process may be tempted to divert goods and services or public funds for their personal use. We need to identify weak links in the public procurement process where the risk of corruption is high, to explore the best ways of improving transparency and accountability and to identify effective actions to prevent, and detect corruption in this field."

As a first step to reduce corruption that originates in interface with government, Baig proposed to introduce a system of e-transfers for all transactions of government.