Ministry of Ayush takes financial management initiative
Published: Nov 19, 2020
By TIOLCORPLAWS News Service
NEW DELHI, NOV 19, 2020: The Ministry of AYUSH has rolled out a set of initiatives to improve Financial Management and accelerate Governance Reforms. These initiatives have two thrust areas, namely the Government Schemes (both Central Sector and Centrally Sponsored) and the Autonomous Bodies of the Ministry.
The road-map to this set of initiatives were laid down by Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, Secretary (AYUSH) and Shri Dharmendra Singh Gangwar, Additional Secretary and Financial Adviser in a high level meeting in the Ministry held in September, 2020. These were taken up for implementation on priority by the different units of the Ministry. Drawing up the list of financial and governance reforms, and designing programme/schemes to ensure that fund flow is reached to Project Implementation Agency in a seamless and direct manner are among the ground work activities identified. These will be supplemented with timely release of funds to State Governments with matching shares and pre-defined triggers so that there is no parking of funds at any level. These steps, thus serve to nullify some of the frequently observed bottlenecks that delay government projects.
An immediate impact of this initiative has been the increased adoption of the Public Financial Management System, the modern and speedy accounts management system of the Government, by the Autonomous Bodies and Schemes Units of the Ministry.
The practice of the Autonomous Bodies (ABs) entering into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Ministry of AYUSH with performance targets has also been adopted and implementation with respect to many of the ABs. These MoUs will help to align the outcomes of the Autonomous Bodies with the goals and objectives of the Ministry, and to eliminate overlaps and wastages of efforts and resources.
In order to pre-empt leakage and increase speed, all payments like stipends to students etc., will be through electronic mode, on the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) platform
Introduction of Third Party Evaluation of all Government Schemes of the Ministry is another step, and this will be carried out by November, 2020. This will lead to objective evaluation of outcomes and consequent performance improvement.
