Aaadhar-Enabled Unified Payment Infrastructure report presented to Mukherjee

New Delhi, Feb 23 (ANI): Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday said that Aadhaar-Enabled E-payment system would help not only in ensuring the timely payments directly to the intended beneficiaries, but would also help in reducing the time taken, transaction costs and the leakages among others.

Mukherjee, who was speaking after receiving the final report of the Task Force on Aaadhar-Enabled Unified Payment Infrastructure presented to him by Nandan Nilekani, Chairman UIDAI and the Task Force, said that this would also help in bringing transparency in the system and reducing avoidable delays.

Mukherjee further said that pilot projects be upscaled and implemented in more areas and in more States.

"So far, pilot projects are mainly implemented in the areas of LPG, kerosene, fertilizers and MGNREGS which can be further expanded," he added.

Union Agriculture Minister Shard Pawar, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State (Independent charge) for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, K.V. Thomas, Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers, Srikant Jena, Secretaries of various Departments/Ministries and senior officials of Ministry of Finance and Planning Commission among others were present in today's meeting.

Earlier, the Chairman UIDAI and the Task Force, Nandan Nilekani, made a presentation highlighting the various recommendations made by the Task Force in its Final Report.

Nilekani said that a strategic transformation of the governance can be brought about by the usage of electronic payments across the board. He said that the Task Force has recommended a systematic platform based approach for the electronic payments.

The Task Force, which was chaired by Nandan Nilekani also included Secretaries of the Departments of Expenditure, Financial Services, Fertilisers, Petroleum, Agriculture, Rural Development, and Food and Consumer Affairs among others.

The members also included DG, UIDAI, Controller General of Accounts (CGA), and representatives from the NIC, RBI, IBA and NPCI.

The Task Force was constituted in September 2011 to recommend, inter alia, a detailed solution architecture for direct transfer of subsidy through a payments bridge wherein funds can be transferred into any Aadhaar-enabled bank account on the basis of the Aadhaar number.

The salient recommendations of the Task Force include that beneficiaries of all social safety net programs (MGNREGS, SSP, JSY, IAY, scholarships, etc.) and recipients of direct subsidy transfer payments (LPG, Fertilisers, kerosene, etc.) can greatly benefit by receiving their payments electronically, directly into accounts of their choice at either banks or post offices.

The Task Force report is available on the Ministry of Finance website www.finmin.nic.in (ANI)