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Clean Ganga Project: Of PRIME importance
Grant Thornton’s dashboard, GT PRIME, will ensure efficient spending on the Clean Ganga Project.
August 2019
In June 2019, Grant Thornton launched a unique product for the Jal Shakti Ministry’s Namami Gange Programme (NGP). Called Grant Thornton’s Procurement Reporting and Information Management e-System (GT PRIME), this management information system (MIS) dashboard is aimed at bringing efficiency in the procurement work undertaken under NGP.
The NGP is a plan focused on cleaning and revitalising river Ganga, undertaken by the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG). Since February 2018, Grant Thornton has been providing Procurement Management Support Services (PMSS) to NGP by managing the entire procurement worth INR 20,000 crore.
Background
While NMCG spells out the government’s aim clearly, the real challenge is achieving this ultimate objective seamlessly. River Ganga, which has a unique spiritual connection with people - runs through five states in its 2,525 km journey from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. With a catchment area amounting to 26% of the country’s land mass, close to 750 million people are dependent on the river for reasons aplenty.
If Ganga needs to be cleaned, all stakeholders along the river - right from the village panchayat, to cities and their municipalities, state administration, central government, industries, people living around Ganga and those visiting the area as well – have to be a part of this mission. If cleaning is the objective, coordination among all these stakeholders is one of greatest challenges.
Recently, the Union Cabinet Minister in the Ministry of Jal Shakti, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, said, “If it took Germany 25 years (to clean the Rhine), then five years is not a long time to clean the Ganga.” (Source: Indian Express)
Grant Thornton’s intervention and innovation
Grant Thornton, as NMCG’s PMSS, is assisting and ensuring that all public procurement of goods, works and services at NMCG, State Programme Management Group (SPMG), in general, and all projects funded under the NGP are done in accordance with the provisions of General Financial and Accounts Rules (GF&AR), Public Works Financial and Accounts Rules (PWF&AR), treasury rules, etc.
In a short association with NMCG, it was felt that there was a need to monitor a procurement of this magnitude to reduce and eliminate the scope of time and cost overruns. As a result, our product GT PRIME was proposed, accepted and thereafter launched.
GT PRIME was put in place to address the need for the programme to be coordinated and monitored for all stakeholders from the village level to the centre.
Developed entirely by Grant Thornton’s procurement and IT team, the platform was launched on 14 June 2019. At the launch, Rajiv Ranjan Mishra, Director General of NMCG, said, “This is one dashboard I would study myself”.
Led by Asgar Naqvi and Kunal Sood, and members of NMCG, the team that put GT PRIME together includes Felix Anton, Jagan Patnaik and Sangram.
GT PRIME: A success!
The platform is now being used as a one-stop repository for monitoring procurement, maintaining its data and generating reports for close to 200 projects with a cumulative procurement value of around INR 8,000 crore.
This MIS product looks up to 90 days ahead and automatically sends alerts to linked email IDs on key dates and milestones like contract’s end date, earnest money deposit (EMD), bank guarantee (BG) expiry, etc. Key decision makers are now aware of the procurement across the procurement cycle, and are warned well in advance to take necessary steps if required.
We aim to implement this procurement process and standard with other clients as well.