The Government's construction major, Central Public Works Department (CPWD), has undergone a major digital transformation that enables it to make digital  payments worth Rs 20,000 crore per year. 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.

With this, CPWD has become the first organisation of a Civil Ministry to become digital at the field level. The CPWD executes over 25,000 project works across the country involving annual payments of over Rs 20,000-crore every year by it's 400 field offices including in remote, hilly and North-Eastern parts.

An official of Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry said the new digital payment mode covers over six lakh transactions. The Office of Chief Controller of Accounts (CCA) of the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs has evolved this special Public Financial Management (PFMS) Portal for CPWD.

During a demonstration of this online payment system to Duga Shanker Mishra, Secretary (HUA), Shyam Dubey, CCA explained that it enables real time monitoring of expenditure in respect of each of the 25,000 projects across the country. “Since fund release is linked to progress of works, digital payments also ensures efficient utilisation of funds”, he said.

Mishra directed CPWD and CCA to further ensure geo-tagging of physical progress of works for effective monitoring. PFMS is an end-to-end solution for electronic processing payments, tracking fund flow, monitoring, accounting, reconciliation and reporting etc.

PFMS has been adopted by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs since October, 2015 by which the allocation of Rs 34,000 crore has been transferred electronically. With CPWD now going digital, the volume of e-payments of

the Ministry and CPWD would be about Rs 60,000 crore during 2017-18.

Since CPWD has a separate scheme of delegation of functions and financial powers, it required a special PFMS e-module for online transactions.