VIJAYAWADA: As part of streamlining the Comprehensive Financial Management System (CFMS), the Finance department has stripped Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Andhra Pradesh Centre for Financial Systems and Services (APCFSS) Vasireddy Krishna Devarayalu of the authority to clear bills. The APCFSS manages the system, which it has designed.
The decision is said to have been taken last week before the reports of allegations of misuse of the CFMS surfaced.With the latest decision, the authority to clear bills, which partially rested with a private person (CEO), has been taken over by the government. “We have taken away [the authority] from Krishna Devarayalu and given it to the Special Secretary (Finance). Even though it is a tedious process, we thought it was better for the government to clear bills rather than entrust it to a technocrat,” a top-ranking official told The New Indian Express.
For the record, Krishna Devarayalu was clearing the bills up to the value of Rs 1 crore, while the Special Chief Secretary (Full Additional Charge) Muddada Ravi Chandra was looking after bills over Rs 1 crore. The finance department drew criticism for putting the authority of clearing all payments from the government in the hands of a private person, who was accused of misusing his position.
“The removal of the CEO as the authority, however, doesn’t mean there were irregularities. The CEO did not have any decision-making powers as to which bill to clear and when. He merely cleared the bills assigned to him,” the official clarified.
It maybe recalled that the CFMS, an enterprise-wide platform, was launched to ensure a transparent, robust and effective financial transaction to improve the fiscal discipline of the State. The CFMS was developed on SAP S4 HANA platform, as a ‘single source of truth’ and the State government transferred all the financial transactions to it since its launch in April, 2018.
The department of finance prepared the entire budget and did auditing on CFMS last year, doing away with paper.