PM to meet ministries on July 30 on DBT implementation

Seeking to expedite the implementation of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called a meeting of different ministries on July 30 to clear the bottlenecks.

To be attended by Finance Minister P Chidambaram, the meeting is likely to discuss the contours of the scheme and streamlining the transfer of LPG subsidy through the Aadhaar platform.

Keen to hasten the DBT scheme, the government had last week shifted a key department overseeing its implementation -- 'Mission Director' from the Planning Commission to the Finance Ministry for "better coordination" and "resolution of inter-ministerial issues".

The DBT programme has covered over 2.8 million LPG transactions valued at Rs 116 crore since its launch on June 1, 2013.

The programme was rolled-out in 43 districts from January 1 and has now been expanded to 121 districts.

The bulk of the work in DBT at the moment is in digitisation of databases, re-engineering government processes for automating financial transactions, enrolling in Aadhaar and ensuring that every recipient has bank accounts seeded with Aadhaar.

The re-engineering and automation of financial transactions processes have to be facilitated by the Expenditure department opening of bank accounts and seeding them is the responsibility of department of Financial Services in the Finance Ministry.

Chidambaram had last week said that he has asked banks to approach the customers for submission of Aadhaar number to ensure seamless transfer of cash benefit.