Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday urged the Indian Civil Accounts Organisation (ICAO), in consultation with the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), to work towards making the country’s annual accounts more accessible and user-friendly. She emphasized the need for creating platforms that would enable citizens to analyze and generate customizable, simplified reports.

“Now with integration of digital portals and having got so many States on board , there can be lot more of research that can be carried out based on the data sets that you have”, Sitharaman suggested at an event marking the Civil Accounts Day 2025 in the Capital. 

The Civil Accounts Day 2025 was celebrated to mark the 49th foundation day of Indian Civil Accounts Service (ICAS). 

The Indian Civil Accounts Service performs a key role in delivery of financial management services for the Central Government. The organisation provides payment services, supports the tax collection system, performs government wide accounting, financial reporting functions and carries out internal audit in the civil ministries of the central government. 

During the inaugural function, Sitharaman also released a compendium on the Public Financial Management System (PFMS), titled “Digitalisation of Public Financial Management in India: The Transformative Decade (2014-24)”.

In her address, Sitharaman  lauded the efforts of Indian Civil Accounts Service and recognised the role played by PFMS in achieving the key goals of governance which included: reaching the last mile benefitting 60 crore beneficiaries; direct delivery of more than 1200 central and state schemes which includes 1100 DBT schemes; end-to-end digitization through integration with 250 plus external systems such as GeM, GSTIN, TIN 2.0, PM Kisan and many more.

Cooperative federalism

Sitharaman said that PFMS has led to strengthening of cooperative federalism through integration of 31 state treasuries and 40 lakh programme implementing agencies enabling seamless financial management for millions of citizens ensuring timely and transparent disbursement of government funds.

The Union Finance Minister underlined PFMS as the network of networks with 650 financial institutions – RBI, NPCI, Public and Private sector banks – facilitating seamless fund transfers, with the volume of PFMS transactions has gone up exponentially from 2 crore payments in 2015 to 250 crore in 2024.

Manoj Govil, Secretary, Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, said that talks are on with Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on the issues relating to harmonisation of Union and States accounting codes and practices. 

He also said there is need to harmonise the accounting codes of rural and urban local bodies. “All of this will help us in preparing reliable accounts for the general government”, Govil added. 

Noting that PFMS has among other things  ensured timely release of funds and effective cash management, Govil said. 

“We are also working on second version of PFMS —PFMS 2.0 to further improve the capabilities and efficiencies of PFMS”, he said. 

He also said that work is currently underway for the automation of Centre’s financial accounts and this will ensure financial information is promptly available for analysis. “This will lead to informed decision making and accelerate the preparation of projects. It will reduce human errors”, he said. 

He lauded the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) and his team’s efforts for ensuring the timely submission of Government’s financial statements to the Parliament for 2023-24. “This was done in same calendar year. We hope to further reduce the timelines in future”. 

In his welcome address Shyam S. Dubey, Controller General of Accounts (CGA) gave details of the achievements of the organisation during the year in the area of accounts, Public Financial Management and capacity building. He outlined the organisation’s demonstrated robustness during the COVID-19 pandemic, transferring over ₹ 22.85 lakh crore, including DBT schemes.

Later, describing PFMS as “incredible”, Arvind Panagariya, Chairman of 16th Finance Commission stated that PFMS acts as a critical digital infrastructure to enable transactions between different economic entities efficiently and transparently. He felt that UPI & PFMS should be part of India’s international diplomatic outreach and global relationship, and called for greater integration of PFMS with the State Governments and Urban and Rural Local Bodies.