Punjab would become the first state to launch a cyber treasury portal for the public in July. Having introduced electronic clearing system (ECS), or direct credit facility, to the employees and departments to streamline government disbursements, the state is in the process of extending this for the public by providing online payment facility of all challans.
In this regard, the state has written a letter to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) seeking its permission. Punjab's Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa could not be contacted in this regard due to ill health. However, the secretary finance-cum-director of Institutional Finance & Banking, Dilip Kumar, said, "We have written a letter to the Reserve Bank of India seeking its permission to authorise the banks for the services. We hope to receive the permission very soon and the portal will likely be operational by next month. Once operational, the contractors' or vendors' payments would be directly credited to their account, bringing transparency in the system."
He mentioned that Punjab is one of the prime states in the country to automate the complete financial cycle (planning, budgeting and disbursement) with key focus on data capturing at source to minimise manual interventions and errors.
The state government has entrusted Tata Consultancy Services to implement the project in the state and claims to be the fastest in implementation of such facility in the country. It is worth noting that in order to streamline and improve upon its functioning, bring efficiency in its operations and to put speedy and effective delivery of services to its stakeholders Department of Finance of the state government is implementing Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) in the state.
A senior official in Tata consultancy informed that apart from automating the core functioning Department of Finance, the state government is keen to introduce major reforms in the system through IFMS. The first to be introduced is the Electronic Clearing System (ECS) or direct credit facility to streamline the government disbursement, under this all government payments will be directly credited into employees and departments accounts. It has been successfully implemented in the entire state since April 1, 2013 so that Treasuries will not issue cheques in the current financial year. Hence all government disbursements which includes payments to various departments and all vendor payments will be online. Further, with the implementation of this project, it has been decided that the Finance Department would receive fund release proposals online only and no physical files would be required to be submitted.
Kumar added that the same would be extended for public by providing online payment facility of all challan through the cyber treasury portal.
Furthermore, he added that the treasuries have been integrated with the Excise and Transport Department in order to eliminate the tedious manual reconciliation process between the departments, moving ahead the finance department will host all the challans on the cyber treasury portal and banks. Citizens will be able to harness the benefit of the system very soon.
This is an initiative of finance department to provide services at the doorstep and to make government processes simple and available to all.
It is worth mentioning that IFMS has not only automated the entire functioning of the finance department which includes the budget preparation and allocation but also covers entire 21 District, 74 Sub Treasuries for whole receipt, disbursement and accounting, department of planning for plan preparation and other Administrative departments including the works departments for payment authorization and raising online bills or claims.
