Food & Supplies Aarthia Payment System Punjab

Organisation : Department of Food and Supplies,Punjab
Facility : Aarthia Payment System

Aarthia Payment System : http://foodsuppb.nic.in/aps.html
Home Page : http://foodsuppb.nic.in/index.html

Kissan Aarthia Information

This system marks a landmark change in the way payments are made to Arhtias and finally to the farmers and has opened up a new chapter in the history of the department as to how the use of technology becomes a facilitator for all stake holders.

Related : Department of Food and Supplies Get Aadhaar Card : www.statusin.in/816.html

This has been successfully implemented all over Punjab and may be extended to other crops as well and some facility of this type should also be developed to deliver subsidies on kerosene, diesel, fertilizers etc.

Benefits :
** There is no additional cost of solution as costs of application and its running & maintenance is paid by the participating banks.
** There are no data entry errors in the system which is major hurdle in the process of computerization as Punjabi names can be spelled in many ways in English.
** There would be no delay in the payment to the arthia and department would be in a position to fix responsibility of the person causing delay if at all.
** The clerical work being done by field level staff would be considerably reduced because the necessary reports for cross checking would be available electronically on line.
** The level of accuracy in payment process would improve since all the transactions would be done through computers.

** There would be no idle float in current accounts at field offices as the payment would be drawn from the single account and would be credited to arthia accounts. This will lead to saving of considerable amount of interest on cash credit limit.

** This system provides end to end electric process with least human intervention and no manual intervention is involved for transfer of money from agency account to Arthia account.
** This system is provided free of cost to all the stake holders, no charges are taken from the arthia and agencies.
** Not much investment is required to implement the system as all the operation are done by banks/utility and only 2 computers ,one printer and internet connection are required for this system.

** Complete feedback of payments made is given by the bank through portal i.e detailed reconciliation report of the bank is available bank wise, account wise, arthia wise, crop wise etc saving time and effort in a considerable way, which results in early finalization of accounts.

** The electronic data of procurement and payment is useful in further automation of storage and processing of foodgrains.
** In a nutshell this system with all the benefits is available without any cost to the Department but huge saving in interest and administrative costs.

This payment system was redesigned with the help of NPCI, Global e purchase and participating banks and finally KISSAN ARHTIA INFORMATION & REMMITANCE ONLINE NETWORK was implemented in KMS 2012-13 by Pungrain in all its mandis for the payment to arhtia on a/c of purchase of paddy with the following participating banks
** State Bank of India
** State Bank of Patiala
** Oriental Bank of Commerce
** Union Bank of India
** HDFC Bank
** Axis Bank
** Central Bank of India
** Corporation Bank
** Punjab & Sind Bank

Figures of the transactions made through this project during KMS 12-13:
1. Participating Banks issued cards detailed as follows:
Bank No. Of Cards
AXIS BANK LTD 527
CENTRAL BANK OF INDIA 1
HDFC BANK LTD. 4211
ORIENTAL BANK OF COMMERCE 1635
PUNJAB AND SIND BANK 184
STATE BANK OF INDIA 577
STATE BANK OF PATIALA 1737
UNION BANK OF INDIA 99
TOTAL 8971
8 Banks

After successful implementation of the project during KMS 2012-13, it was envisaged that some more applications shall be included in the project to bring in more efficiencies in the procurement operations.
The details of these applications is as follows :
** Issue of Bardana to Arhtia
** Recording of Private Purchase
** Recording of Agency Purchase-Already in operation
** Decision required to allocation of machine to agency or allotting agency wise password for machines etc.
** Recording of movement of foodgrains from mandi
** Payment of Transportation charges
** Payment of labour charges
** Payment of Mandi Taxes i.e Market fee & RDF
These applications were implemented in all the agencies from RMS 2013-14 after detailed discussions with all the participants.

Process of payment :

1. Participating bank will open dedicated accounts of Artiha.
2. Banks are issuing normal Debit cards to the arthia.
3. Cards would be registered with banks and eportal for arthia payment.
4. Banks would provide swipe machines for transaction capturing, These machine would have GPRS card in it and battery backup of min 8 Hours.
5. As and purchase happens arthia would swipe its card swipe machine.
6. After swipe inspector will punch following information in the swipe machine

** Varity Purchased(Wheat/Paddy Grade-A/Paddy-common)
** No of bags
** Qty of the foodgrains
** Date of Purchase/auction

7. After punching above information, the swipe machine will dial the server and approve the transaction after checking the particulars of the card and the purchase with the server in 7 to 10 seconds.
8. After verification, approval/rejection slip would be generated by the swipe machine in duplicate, one slip will be given to arthia and the other slip will be retained by the Inspector for his record.
9. Information recorded in server is immediately passed on to the approval utility which would be visible to the auditor once the batch is closed in the evening.
10. Once batch is closed for a day, payment process can be initiated through payment utility for approval of payment by auditor/AO/DFSC.
11. The payment approval process/steps are almost the same as presently done for arthia payment approval.
12. After approval of payment by AO/DFSC, the Bank through Payment network (card Company) will push the payment to arthia account.
13. After pushing payment to arhia accounts, confirmation of the payment would be sent to PUNGRAIN/payment approval utility for electronic reconciliation.