The NIC Punjab State Unit has designed and implemented the Essential Commodities Procurement Monitoring System (ECPMS) at the district and state levels of the State. For the Punjab Food and Civil Supplies (FCS) Department, this System has drastically reduced the delays in the availability of daily mandi-wise procurement data from the districts.
A new proforma, to be filled by the Mandi Officer, has been designed, and the data from this proforma entered into the NIC district computers. New codes have been designed for all the mandis, district centres and commodities. The data is then transmitted to the NIC State Unit through NICNET where it is compiled, and various comparison reports generated.
The System provides information on mandi-wise procurement of agricultural commodities by each Agency, to their respective state headquarters through a single channel. It acts as a means of timely and effective control over the field staff and procurement of commodities. Compilation of data through computers reduces the manual labour, time and cost. The System also incorporates provisions for comparing current data with the data of previous years to search for trends and also enable time-series analysis of the data.
The System, with separate modules for implementation at the district and state levels respectively, is menu-driven and extremely user-friendly. It also provides for graphical representation and statistical analysis of the data.
Daily, data from approximately 900 mandis and 155 storage centres is being transferred through NICNET.