Steps taken to streamline financial transactions
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, February 22 2018:
Apart from taking up steps to streamline and ease the financial transactions of various Departments, the Finance Department has also made it mandatory for the approval proposals sent by the Departments regarding material/resource procurement, services, tender etc to have GST payment undertaking.
According to an official source, the Finance Department has issued an office memorandum today to streamline and simplify the procedure for expenditure sanction by Engineering Departments within the available budget and regulation of funds released through Encashment Permission and Cheque Drawal Authority (CDA).
As per the notice, expenditure sanctions for sums upto Rs 3 crore for the Engineering Departments will be issued by the Administrative Departments concerned.
In all cases of exercise of financial powers by the Engineering Departments concerned, concurrence of Internal Finance Division (IFD) must be obtained and authenticated by a UO number of the IFD.
It may be mentioned that the Finance Department issued an office memorandum on December 23 last year, constituting an Internal Finance Division each for every Engineering Departments to monitor their expenditure and even posted an officer of Manipur Finance Service (MFS) at each of these divisions.
The source explained concurrence of the Financial Department will be mandatory for any expenditure sanctions beyond Rs 3 crore.
On the other hand, the Finance Department will consider issuing CDA, keeping in view the position of the State's financial resources as well as the expenditure sanctions issued by the Engineering Departments and physical progress uploaded on Digital Application for Review by Public and Nation (DARPAN) accompanied by the proposal for CDA.
The source pointed out that the office memorandum issued by the Finance Department has been revoked with immediate effect and the new office memo will take its place.
It also explained that all expenditure sanction orders issued by the Departments under their delegated powers for drawal of funds from Treasury, shall require encashment permission from the Finance Department.
Encashment permission will be exempted for all bills for Raj Bhavan, Assembly Secretariat, High Court and MPSC, salaries, pension and pension benefits, remuneration/wages for Home Guards/VDFs, contractual employees, employees of grant in institutions under State plan/CSS/CPS/revenue expenditure, travel expenses, GPF/NPS contribution, repayment of loan, interest payments, purchase of power and water charges etc.
The source explained that in case the expenditure involves procurement of goods or services or both, including contract works, an under taking related to GST payment in the prescribed format of the office memorandum, must be submitted to the Finance Department along with other relevant bills/ vouchers at the time of seeking encashment permission.
Encashment permissions which fail to meet the said criteria Will not be allowed to be encashed at the Treasury, the source added.
The files from the Administrative Departments will be received by the IFD or the Finance Department if and only if they are entered through FIBERS on-line system.
It may also be noted that as per another office memorandum issued by the Finance Department, all proposals, except a few, which got expenditure sanction and concurrence of Finance Department, need not take any encashment permission.
All the Departments concerned had also been earlier instructed to send their expenditure sanction proposal to the Finance Department by February 28, taking into account the work load of the financial year end.