Central Plan Scheme Monitoring System

PFMS[http://WWW.PFMS.NIC.IN

Public Financial Management System () is a Central Sector (CS) Scheme Administered and implemented by the Controller General of Accounts. It envisaged to track the fund disbursement from Govt. of India to various levels down below under all Plan Schemes till the last level of utilization and ultimately report utilization under these schemes at different levels of implementation on a real time basis .

PFMS is a Central Sector Plan Scheme of Dept. of Expenditure (earlier CPSMS was piloted by erstwhile Planning Commission) and is being implemented by the Office of the Controller General of Accounts (CGA). The complete technical support viz. application development, database administration, hosting of portal etc has been entrusted to NIC.

PFMS Evolution :

i. Pilot approved by Government in 2010 for 4 flagship plan schemes for some states;

ii. 2013-2014: Appraisal of results and conversion into a Central sector scheme for XII Plan period;

iii. 2014: Expansion of scope to include end to end digitization of Government accounts. Inclusion of all Government expenditure receipts/payments;

iv. 2013-14: PFMS for DBT payments in all major welfare programmes of Government except PAHAL;

v. 2017:- Extension of PFMS till the end of XIV FC award period i.e 31st March,2020 at estimated outlay of Rs 839 crore.

vi. On February 27th, 2017, Ministry of Finance, Dept of Expenditure approved the extension of Public Financial Management System (PFMS) beyond 31.03.2017 till 31st march 2020.

The Mandate :- The mandate given to PFMS through a Union Cabinet decision was to provide :-

i. Facilitate Just in Time (JIT) release of funds and tracking of the same for all schemes of GoI.

ii. PFMS would also strive to achieve treasury integration with all the states, complete registration of all implementing agencies (IA’s) and usage of Expenditure, Advance & Transfer (EAT) module. Facilitating Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) payments and convergence with other IT platforms, integration with remaining banks, complete digitisation of government receipt and payments, technology up-gradation for improved performance and security.

iii. Enhancement of PFMS to GIFMIS (Government Integrated Financial Management Information System), Training and capacity building and data mining /analytics for improved decision support system (DSS).

Organisation Structure

PFMS is being administered and implemented by the CGA(CGA.gov.in) organisation. In order to achieve its mandates, a multitier structure is established where Project implementation committee (PIC) acts as an Apex Body for PFMS providing necessary directions , below it Central project Management Unit (CPMU) which forms the backbone of the PFMS. It handles Complete Setup wrt harwares/Data centres and also acts a control centre for below units called state Project Monitoring Units (SPMUs) which are located in all the state capital & UTs and responsible for Rollout and implementation of CSS schemes & state linked schemes. Cutting edge level units, District Project Management Units (DPMUs) are under planning stage.

Impact on Public Finance Tangible Improvement in Public Expenditure Management (through PFMS) can be seen in reduction in costs associated with programme execution such as borrowing costs etc. where PFMS provides inputs through:-

i. Facilitates tracking of balances available with Programme implementing agencies;

ii. Balances can be drilled down to last tier to ascertain parking of funds if any;

iii. DBT shortens the fund flow pipeline and bureaucratic intermediation;

iv. Reduces the financial cost of Government programmes.

Tackling the issue of float of fund

Data analysed indicated that a float of about 1.40 lakh cr. remained in the system at the end of the financial year 2017-18. PFMS has helped the Government to quantify the extent of float in the system with reasonable degree of certainty. This has been achieved by:

i. Onboarding Implementing agencies (along with their bank account details) and a simultaneous integration of PFMS with the core banking solutions employed by Public Sector banks, Regional rural banks, Major Private sector banks and some Co-operative banks. This enabled Programme Divisions/Ministry of Finance to get a real time information on the idle balances available with the Implementing agencies and to calibrate the releases accordingly.

ii. PFMS further provided a platform for Direct benefit transfer (DBT) which was aimed at transferring the money directly to the beneficiaries’ account thereby eliminating the float altogether. The total releases under DBT mode has increased from nearly 7000 crore in 2014-15 to Rs. 1.35 lakh cr in 2017-18 thus addressing the issue of idle balances in a significant manner.

PM-KISAN

Major achievement of PFMS this year was speedy and efficient implementation of PM-KISAN where scheme was operationlized withIN 25 days of the budget announcement and 1.01 Crore beneficiaries were paid on launch day itself through PFMS-DBT and total 2.0 Crores beneficiaries received the benefits within 10 days of the scheme launch.

Capacity Development Considering the large number of Implementation Agencies that need to be on boarded on PFMS, a separate Training Wing was formed at PFMS. Mandate provided to the training Division is to provide training and hand holding support for all functionalities and modules of PFMS. INGAF (Institute of Government accounting & Finance)(www.ingaf.gov.in) has been nominated as the nodal agency for this purpose. During 2017-18, over 30,000 users/officials have been provided face to face training on PFMS modules. INGAF also developed audio-visual training material which has been viewed nearly 1,500,000 times.