GoI tracks the money trail: How PFMS will pull plug on spending slippages

The updated Public Financial Management System will complete one year in operation on March 31, but challenges to full integration remain

By midnight of March 31, just a couple of weeks from now, in all government offices across the country, millions of data entries for purchases and spends being keyed into terminals will come to a halt. By next morning, the officers of the Controller Gen­eral of Accounts will tell the respective finance secretaries, what got spent and what didn’t in FY22. Armed with the data, in less than a week, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be able to figure out if the new financial year is starting with adequate cash reserves.

The elaborate public money-tracking system that makes this possible is