Bids soon to man individual pension accounts

NEW DELHI: The regulator for the new pension scheme would soon invite bids from private sector fund managers to handle parts of its Rs 1,700-crore corpus, which theregulator expects to more than double in some time.
Insurance companies such as Tata AIG and MetLife India Insurance Co, which are partly owned by foreign investors, can also participate in the Fund management of the new pension scheme administered by the Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority (PFRDA), an official with the regulator said.
The appointment of private fund managers comes ahead of the regulator’s plan to extend the scheme to private individuals from April 1, 2009. Now, participation in the scheme is compulsory for employees who joined government service after January 1, 2004, and voluntary for those who are in public service.
Competition among fund managers would give contributors the option to choose from different investment schemes and the opportunity to switch from one scheme to another depending on the returns. “Many foreign insurance entities have joint ventures in the country. They could sponsor pension schemes by setting up dedicated arms for that. Their eligibility criteria would be the same as that of other fund managers,” an official told ET. Entities managing Rs 10,000 crore and with five-year experience are eligible. Today, SBI, UTI Asset Management Co and LIC are managing the corpus of the scheme.
PFRDA would first invite expressions of interest, evaluate them as per technical parameters, and then invite commercial bids.
While the pension regulator will keep the total number of fund managers limited, it would appoint unlimited number of entities for soliciting and collecting contributions from individuals.
These could be banks, post offices or other entities with a large reach and ability to transfer funds electronically. “We have 1,50,000 post offices in the country, but only 10,000-15,000 have electronic connectivity with other centres. We need agents that can instantly transfer funds electronically. Otherwise contributors’ savings would remain blocked at various levels, causing them losses,” said the official.
The regulator is framing investment guidelines for the fund managers to safely deploy private individuals’ savings and to give them decent returns depending upon their risk appetite. Only 15% of government employees’ savings will go to the stock market

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Courtesy : The Economic times

National Best practice in Finance By Government Knowledge Center (DARPG)

Koshwahini: Treasury Information System

Introduction:

Treasuries are pivotal to all government operations in any country. Transparency of treasury operations also ensures accountability of government expenditures. In order to enhance citizen engagement and service delivery, it is therefore central to first computerize the treasuries so that transactions are quick, transparent and accurate. This is the essence of Koshwahini.

Koshawahini is an online financial information system designed by Directorate of Accounts and Treasuries with the help of National Informatics Centre. Data is collected from 33 District Treasuries, 292 Sub Treasuries & Pay & Accounts office and processed and converted into useful information at the level of the Directorate. The object of KOSHWAHINI is to make available up to date financial information required for various departments of the Government. The system gives detailed information for Compiled Payment Data, Compiled Receipt Data up to voucher level, chalan level respectively and also Bills in Process. It also gives reports for various payments. More over, it gives report on Budget with Expenditure for various combinations.

Koshwahini is Treasury Information System to manage the exchequer across Maharashtra. It is a powerful fact-based fiscal management tool for the entire State Government. It comprises:

• Data warehouse of Treasury Expenditure & Receipts
• Treasury Net: Workflow in the Treasury
• Reconciliation with Accountant General.
• E scroll from the Banks for payment reconciliation
• LOC: Monitoring PWD, Forest, Irrigation Accounts
• Budget Distribution System
• Pension Payment System

Some of the numbers which involve the Koshwahini project are staggering and is as below:

1. Offices: One PAO in Mumbai, 33 District Treasuries, 295 sub-Treasuries.

2. 12000 Drawing & Disbursing Officers.

3. 85 lac Challans & 35 lac Vouchers every Year.

4. Number of Schemes:

-10,000 Payment Schemes

-1,100% Receipt Schemes

5. Number of State Government Pensioners : More than 4.5 lac

Koshwahini is developed using Java, JSP, DB2, Linux. It is running Live successfully for a few years across levels. Koshwahini is launched at the Data Center at Mumbai. Koshwanini has been developed on IBM middleware technologies as it is vertically & horizontally scalable with the flexibility to develop and deploy the solution on various platforms including Linux.

The Project Objectives:

1. Providing appropriate information at right time in right place

2. Building up of responsibility and accountability in the system

3. Ensuring professional approach in the Government

4. Provide efficient service management

5. Efficient delivery of services to end users

Services Offered:

1.Expeditious and transparent system of clearance of bills in a timely manner to the most socially backward classes and to the remotest tribal areas

2.Expenditure forecasts so that the required amounts are kept available in the treasuries

3.Generates bills of monthly Pension to be paid to the five lakh State pensioners and provides them facility of payment through Electronic Clearing System (ECS)

4. Payment of salary to 6 lakh State Government employees directly into their bank account

( Source : Treasury Department, Govt. of Maharshtra)

1. Electronic Pay Billing.

2. E Budget Distribution System.

3. Website for Pensioners

4. Strengthening of Koshwahini

5. Virtual Treasury

6. Central Treasury – Treasury Net

What are the benefits and why is it a good practice?

• A tool to manage the money efficiently & effectively
• Online custom made multi-dimension view to the data & information from various stakeholder’s perspective
• Smart Scheme monitoring and management
• Immediate Cheque Reconciliation
• Monthly Bureau report is now available within a week of subsequent month, while earlier it used to take to take around 2 months
• DAT has stopped sending printed report of around 100 pages every month to approx. 35 departments, as the information & data is available through online queries
• Availability of data for expenditure Reconciliation
• Optimised and reduced timelines in disbursing the Pension to around half a million Pensioners
• A totally transparent system

The other states in India are looking at Koshwahini as a role model application and are planning to implement in their respective States. Some of the states have already visited and carrying out the Gap Analysis to kick-off their implementations. Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Meghayalya are among the states. Further, a high level team from Controller General of Accounts New Delhi (CGA) has visited the project; registered their acknowledgement on the success of project; and have expressed their desire to replicate similar project in their Country-wide operations.

With the implementation of treasury computerization, the system enforces daily tallying of accounts instead of tallying at the end of month and now accounts are submitted in time by the treasuries to the A.G. even before the due dates. The challans received by treasuries regarding State's dues paid are expeditiously reconciled with bank scrolls, ensuring immediate corrective actions. Finally, up to date data is available for financial decision-making. Staff can use its time more efficiently and handle greater volumes of work more professionally. Also, this has increased the motivational level in the organization and has made treasuries more accountable and transparent.

Source HERE