New Delhi: Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman launched the e-Bill system for Central government ministries on the 46th Civil Accounts Day here on Wednesday. In a phased manner, the new system will make the entire process of submission and backend processing of bills completely paperless and transparent. It is a major step forward in realizing the vision of ‘Digital India’ and promoting ease of doing business.

The objectives of the system are to provide convenience to all vendors/suppliers of the government to submit their bills/claims at anytime, from anywhere; eliminate physical interface between suppliers and government officers; enhance efficiency in processing of bills/claims; reduce discretion in processing of bills through ‘First-In-First-Out’ (FIFO) method.

Currently, the suppliers of various goods and services to the government have to submit physical, ink-signed copies of their bills to the respective ministries, departments/offices of the Government of India. Similarly, the government employees also need to submit hard copies of their claims. At the backend too, the processing of bills is done through a mixed system of physical and digital modes. So the suppliers/vendors or their representatives need to visit the offices to deliver bills.

Under the newly launched e-Bill system, vendors, suppliers can upload their bills online along with supporting documents from the convenience of their homes and offices at any time through digital signature. For those not having a digital signature, the facility of e-sign using Aadhaar has also been provided. So, the suppliers will no longer be required to visit the offices concerned for this purpose. At the backend too, the electronic bill received will be processed by the authorities digitally at every stage and finally, the payments will be credited digitally to the bank account of the vendor.

The vendor/supplier would be able to track the status of processing of their bills online.  Thus, the new system will bring in a lot of efficiency and transparency in the system and is a big citizen-centric decision of the Government of India. The e-Bill system has been developed by the Public Financial Management System (PFMS) Division in the office of the Controller General of Accounts in the Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance. The bills will be processed by First-In-First-Out (FIFO) method.

In addition to promoting ease of doing business and bringing convenience to lakhs of vendors/suppliers, the e-Bill system will be environment friendly, eliminating the need to submit crores of paper bills annually and will thus save tonnes of papers every year.  The e-Bill system has an elaborate digital storage facility for retrieval of documents and a robust audit trail. /BI/