More than Rs 36,659 crore (US$ 5.25 billion) has been transferred by using Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) through Public Financial Management System (PFMS) in the Bank accounts of 16.01 crore beneficiaries during COVID 2019 lockdown by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) office, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance.
Direct Benefit Transfer ensures that the cash benefit is directly credited into the account of the beneficiary, eliminates leakage and improves efficiency.
The aforesaid cash amount has been transferred by using robust digital payments technology PFMS (Public Financial Management System) for making DBT payments under Central Schemes (CS) /Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS) /CASP schemes.
Main Highlights:
The following are the details of cash benefits transferred by using PFMS for making DBT payments during COVID 19 period (24th March 2020 till 17thApril 2020).
DBT payment growth using PFMS during the last three years:
PFMS usage for DBT Payments has increased over last #3 FYs wherein Transaction count increased to 11 per cent during FY 2018-19 (compared to Fy 2017-18) and 48 per cent in FY 2019-20. The total DBT amount disbursed increased from 22 per cent in FY 2018-19 to 45 per cent in FY 2019-20.
BACKGROUND:
Ministry of Finance (MoF), Government of India, decided on mandatory use of Public Financial Management System (PFMS) of the office of Controller General of Accounts (CGA) for payment, accounting and reporting under DBT and directed (December 2014) all implementing Ministries/Departments to ensure that no payments under DBT schemes were processed unless the electronic payment files for such payments were received through PFMS from 1st April 2015. Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) is a major reform initiative launched by Government of India to re-engineer the existing cumbersome delivery processes using modern Information and Communication Technology (ICT), by transferring benefits into the bank/postal accounts, preferably Aadhaar seeded, of accurately targeted beneficiaries, as well as in-kind transfers from Government to individual beneficiaries.
Payment ecosystem of DBT in PFMS
Beneficiary management in PFMS Beneficiary data can be entered into PFMS through either of the two modes viz. through Excel upload from PFMS user interface and/or through Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) servers of the integrated external system(s)/ Line of Business (LoB) applications PFMS also does pre-validation of Bank Accounts/Postal accounts and validation of Aadhaar number on National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) Aadhaar mapper.
DBT includes in-kind and cash transfers to beneficiaries as well as transfers/honorariums given to various enablers of government schemes like community workers, etc for successful implementation of the schemes.
Transfer of cash benefits from Ministries/Departments is donethgrogh PFMS:
BENEFITS OF DBT:
DBT intends to achieve (through CARE):
Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.