There must be certain cogent reasons in not clearing the bills of several suppliers by various departments of Government of Jammu and Kashmir which, however, are not known except the fact that a whooping amount of Rs.280 crore is outstanding as un-cleared liabilities with the concerned Government departments. The problem assumes serious connotations looking to which are the ones comprising these supplier creditors. These are some Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), Small Scale Industries Development Corporation and several wings of the Industries Department which, as a principle, must keep the cycle of receivables, liquidity, supplies and manufacturing process going or in other words, any undue delay in payments must be not without causing a telling effect on their commercial activities. That was true of even the institutions like SIDCO that is directly connected to the MEMEs. Like this attitude towards finance and allied issues, lot of problems were created for these self employed and micro employment generating units. The departments which have defaulted in making payments for years together are Public Works (R&B) Department, Power Development Department, Rural Development Department, Jal Shakti, Irrigation and Flood Control. The worst part of the matter is that such a scenario of keeping liabilities mounting and not clearing them has been there for quite some time and strangely no one has bothered so long to look into such state of affairs of the concerned Government departments. At least, while dealing with the end use and expenditure details of the budgeted funds, the type of explanation given for reasons of these outstanding liabilities and not t clearing the same from out of the said funds by the concerned departments, needs to be known. Whether it could be for reasons extraneous to the simple principles of payments against the supplies after due processing like fixation and determination of prices or returning such supplies citing the reasons thereof, but never ever keeping such supplies not paid against, must all be ascertained. It is, however, a matter of some relief that the Finance Department has visualised such an unwarranted procedure being in vogue as if an accepted routine and has, therefore, taken certain workable initiatives in order to ensure the outstanding liabilities got cleared in a gradual way so that the pall of uncertainty looming large over clearance of the payments was over. The range of supplies made by these enterprises were materials like cement, iron, steel, bitumen, wire crates, furniture, power distribution transformers, conductors and poles etc. It is believed that some portion of these supplies were procured by the enterprises direct from the market against hard payment. Simple things must be resolved with simple available procedural tools instead of keeping protracted and lingering on which are as a consequence of getting stuck up in avoidable formalities too. Now, in a position when there are these outstanding(s) carried forward in books to succeeding years, reconciliation problems and squaring off entries entails cumbersome job which again results in the liabilities not getting cleared easily. It should, therefore, be made mandatory to clear the outstanding(s) within the same financial year which arise on account of purchases by the Government departments. That would help both the departments and the recipient suppliers of making and receiving the payments respectively without either of the two getting entangled in issues s of avoidable nature including the suppliers facing financial crisis and the departments attracting audit adverse comments for creation of outstanding liabilities. The departments have now been directed to complete codal formalities and defaulting departments having been asked to appoint Nodal Officers to oversee the process of making payments and clearing outstanding liabilities must ensure that payments were made in accordance with the procedures and in the burst of doing so, unspecified or unverified payments were not made. It is quite in the fitness of things that periodic, preferably weekly progress reports, were furnished to serve the purpose of knowing about the status of outstanding(s) and squaring off and reconciling the entries inter-se various departments and the suppliers. We would again reiterate the need to fix responsibilities for any type of reckless or casual approach by the concerned departments in such matters which result in keeping g payments uncleared without any specific or cogent reasons.
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