NGO Consultant

NGO Consultant
Odisha NGO Consultancy Services

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

MHA wants real-time monitoring of NGOs’ foreign funds

According to MHA officials, some banks currently update their intranet systems with transaction details of these accounts only once in 24 hours.

AN effort to keep track of foreign funds received by NGOs on a “real-time basis”, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has asked the Reserve Bank of India to instruct all banks to link designated foreign contribution accounts to the MHA’s online database through the Core Banking Solutions system and Public Financial Management System.

According to MHA officials, some banks currently update their intranet systems with transaction details of these accounts only once in 24 hours. The MHA wants automatic updates on any activity regarding these accounts.

“Each beneficiary of foreign contribution has a designated account. We have observed that banks are pushing transaction data of these accounts only once in 24 hours and that too is updated manually. We have taken up the matter with the RBI, as we want to ensure that we can track all such transactions on a real-time basis through an automatic reflection in the Home Ministry’s own online system,” said a home ministry official.

“What we have proposed is that all designated accounts of those who receive foreign contributions are linked to the core banking system and the PFMS, which in turn, is linked to our own online database,” the official added.