In order to improve inter-ministerial coordination and hasten the rollout of the Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) programme, the Prime Minister has approved the shifting of the Mission Director and his officers from Planning Commission to the Ministry of Finance. This shift will enable direct supervision of the rollout of DBT across the country and resolution of inter-ministerial issues.

The Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) program was rolled out on 1.1.2013. It began from 43 districts and has now been expanded to 121 districts from 1.7.2013. Transfer of LPG subsidy through DBT was rolled out from 1.6.2013 and now covers 20 districts. In LPG, over 2.8 million DBT transactions valued at Rs. 116 Crores have taken place in 7 weeks.

While approving the DBT program, the Prime Minister had approved the creation of an overarching architecture for managing the program consisting of a National Committee chaired by the Prime Minister and an Executive Committee chaired by the Principal Secretary to PM. At the time of creating this architecture, the DBT programme was initially housed in the Planning Commission. DBT is a programme that cuts across all ministries and only Planning Commission or Finance Ministry would have the necessary reach to make the program successful. Consequently, Secretary, Planning Commission was made the Convenor of the Executive Committee and the Planning Commission supported the initial phase of the DBT rollout.

Subsequently, a full time Mission Director has been appointed for DBT to manage the extensive work involved in rolling out DBT across the country. The Mission Director is supported by a Joint Secretary and additional officers. The office of the Mission Director is located in the Planning Commission at the moment. The two Government departments which have the maximum interface with DBT are the D/o Expenditure which is in-charge of all Government funds being transacted through DBT and the D/o Financial Services which is responsible for financial inclusion and managing the cash transfer process through the Aadhaar Payment Bridge. The other two departments which have a common role are UIDAI which does Aadhaar enrolment and DIT which provides technical support.

The bulk of the work in DBT at the moment is in digitization of databases, re-engineering government processes for automating financial transactions, enrolling in Aadhaar and ensuring that every recipient has bank accounts seeded with Aadhaar. The re-engineering and automation of financial transactions processes have to be facilitated by the D/o Expenditure. The opening of bank accounts and seeding them is the responsibility of D/o Financial Services.

In this context, the Prime Minister decided to place the office of Mission Director (DBT) and his officers within the Ministry of Finance. This would improve the coordination between the DBT programme and the Dept of Expenditure and Dept of  Financial Services. This would make the DBT rollout far more effective and quicker.