Hyderabad: Gram Panchayats miss PRIASoft entries

Hyderabad: Except Medak, rest of the 31 rural districts did not enter their accounts in the PRIASoft portal of the Union Panchayat Raj (PR) department which monitors the revenue and expenditure of the Gram Panchayats (GPs).

Though the Union government has made it mandatory to enter the revenue and expenditure details of the GPs into the PRIASoft portal, most of the GPs have not taken up the process.

The Union PR department has established online accounting portal for the GPs of the country. The GPs of the States have to enter details of their revenue and expenditure details into the portal.

According to the report of the RD department, except Medak district, none of the 31 rural districts have entered the details of their revenue and expenditure into the portal, till date.

Panchayat Raj Institutions Accounting Software (PRIASoft) aims to keep track of all the in-flow (receipts) and out-flow (expenditure) of the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs).

The application facilitates better financial management of PRIs by bringing about transparency and accountability in the maintenance of accounts thereby leading to better credibility and ultimately strengthening of PRIs.

It is centralised accounting software intended for use by all the three levels of Panchayat Raj namely Zilla, Block and Village Panchayat. Apart from making the process of accounting simple and easy (necessarily due to lack of trained manpower at this level), it ensures a better financial management, transparency and accountability at the Panchayat level.

Recently the Union government has written a letter to the State government pointing out the in which it said Ministry of Panchayati Raj has been in the process of putting a robust system for effective monitoring of public expenditure.

In this context, an e-Financial Management System has been put in place comprising of Panchayat Enterprise Suite (PES) Applications like PlanPlus, ActionSoft (including mobile App for Geo-tagging), PRIASoft, and Asset Directory.

It is mandatory for utilisation of FFC funds by GPs through integration of PRIASoft with PFMS. As per the information available, none of the 12,796 GPs in the State have come on-board of PRIASoft-PFMS for online payments.

It is pertinent to mention here that the Finance Commission has mandated that the expenditure of all the funds pertaining to the Finance Commission may be utilised via PRIASoft Interface (only and no other forms of payment may be used).

The Centre made it clear that all the GPs should be encouraged to commence using the PRIASoft and subsequently initiate online payments for expenditure incurred under Central Finance Commission Funds.