The Hindu 18.04.2013
Another milestone in e-governance
First State to implement e-payment in tendering processes.
The State achieved yet another milestone in its march
towards total e-governance, when the entire payments in tendering
processes were made online.
Kerala has become the
first State in the country to implement the e-payment facility in
tendering processes, ensuring total confidentiality and transparency in
the business transactions and thus closing the door to corruption,
Finance Minister K.M. Mani, said, while launching the new facility here
on Wednesday.
He formally inaugurated the system by
publishing the first e-tender of the government with e-payment facility.
The launch event was hosted by the Kerala State IT Mission, which is
the implementing agency for the e-governance project, with National
Informatics Centre and the State Bank of Travancore.
Even
though the government had issued orders in July last that all
government departments should route tenders above Rs.25 lakh through the
e-procurement system after March 31 this year, only a few departments
had joined the system.
The e-payment facility would
soon be extended to other departments, to ensure that all government
transactions were transparent and corruption-free, Mr. Mani said.
Industries
Minister P.K. Kunhalikkutty, who presided over the function, said that
the e-procurement project had been very efficient and had succeeded in
getting rid of a lot of red tapes and delays and achieving efficiency.
The application could be extended to other areas of governance as well
so that the entire government administration was made more efficient, he
added.
The e-procurement system had been launched in
December 2011 in order to make the government’s procurement of goods
and services more transparent. The Public Works Department (PWD) was the
first department to publish an on-line tender
throughwww.etenders.kerala.govand so far, the system had handled 4,346
tenders valued at over Rs.2,300 crore.
At present,
all payments towards tender document fees and Earnest Money Deposit
(EMD) of tenders published through e-procurement gateway are received as
Demand Drafts.
The payment mechanism for tenders has
been now made on-line and has been integrated with the e-procurement
system so that bidders can make the tender document fee and EMD Payments
directly online. The amount will be received in a Government-designated
pooling account of SBT till the opening of bids.
The
EMDs of unsuccessful bidders will be refunded online to bank accounts
at various stages of tender evaluation, which is expected to encourage
more persons to take part in government tenders.
