350 pay and accounts offices implementing e-Bill system, 200 more to join

About 350 pay and accounts offices (PAOs) in government ministries and department have onborded the Electronic Bill (e-Bill) processing system and 200 more are expected to do so in next one year, finance secretary T V Somanathan said on Wednesday.

The e-Bill processing system was launched on March 2 last year. It is being implemented across all central ministries and departments, which will enable suppliers and contractors to submit their claim online, which will be trackable in real time basis.

Speaking at the 47th Civil Accounts Day, Somanathan highlighted the importance of clearing bills without any delay and asserted that much progress has been made.

"The e-bill module has the potential of taking this further. 350 PAOs are now on the e-bill platform and we now need to get all of the rest also as soon as possible and definitely before the next Civil Accounts Day," he said.

Officials said about 200 more PAOs would be onboarding the e-bill platform in next one year.

Prior to the launch of the e-bill system, vendors or contractors were required to submit physical copies of bills to the departments for scrutiny. With the e-bill initiative, claimants would be able to submit digitally signed bills on the public finance management system (PFMS) and check status without approaching offices.

Somanathan said the Indian Civil accounts Office has sucessfully adopted and adapted to technology to implement initiatives like Single Nodal Agency (SNA) for transfer of funds.

This has provided a lot of efficiency gains in cash management and has minimised the unused money lying with various organisations, state and central governments. SNA has ensured that money is released when previous instalments are utilised.

Somanathan said it's now time for the PFMS to transform from being a data-rich system to a data-intelligent system using the tools of data analytics.

"In the SNA system, payments are supposed to be made only for final use and not to be transferred to another bank accounts for parking. But through data analytics we have found that some states have transferred money from SNA bank account to another bank account. These kind of analytical reports are helping us to catch these things before they become big," he said.