PM push sees govt's construction major CPWD goes digital

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's push for paperless payment and real time monitoring of projects by various departments has seen construction major Central Public Works Department (CPWD) enabling payments worth Rs 20,000 cr per year electronically.

With this, CPWD has become the first organisation of a civil ministry to become digital at the field level, an official announcement said. CPWD executes over 25,000 project works across the country involving annual payments of over Rs 20,000 cr every year by the 400 field offices including in remote, hilly and North-Eastern parts.

This has been done by networking all the 400 field offices of CPWD across the country through a special integrated portal ensuring digital payments from this month. The new digital payment mode covers over six lakh transactions.

With CPWD now going digital, the volume of e-payments of the housing and affairs ministry and CPWD would be about Rs.60,000 cr during 2017-18.The Office of Chief Controller of Accounts (CCA) of the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs has evolved a special Public Financial Management (PFMS) Portal for CPWD.

This enables real time monitoring of expenditure in respect of each of the 25,000 projects across the country. "Since fund release is linked to the progress of works, digital payments also ensures efficient utilization of funds," CCA Shyam Dubey said.In yet another initiative, electronic Measurement Book (e-MB) has also been developed for CPWD that enables reporting of progress of works online as per the schedule of agreement with contractors based on which payments will be made.

He said e-MB has been made mandatory from the first of next month doing away with manual reporting by all the 400 field offices. Durga Shanker Mishra, secretary of the housing and affairs ministry has directed CPWD and CCA to further ensure geotagging of physical progress of works for effective monitoring.Public Financial Management (PFMS) Portal is an end-to-end solution for electronic processing payments, tracking fund flow, monitoring, accounting, reconciliation and reporting.