Railways' suppliers can now view status of bills online

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday launched a new feature on the Railways' supply chain web portal, whereby vendors of the national transporter can view details of the bills they have generated and their status.

The 'Digital Receipt Note, Receipted Challan and Digital Bill Submission' feature on the Indian Railways E-Procurement System (IREPS) will improve transparency and ease of doing business, Goyal said.

Digitisation of suppliers' bills will provide end-to-end digital contracting.

It is convenient to both Railways and vendors and will result in faster transactions, a ministry statement stated.

After addressing a press conference on 'Suppliers Samvad - Journey towards Digitisation, Transparency and Ease of Doing Business' here, Goyal also met the vendors and heard their complaints.

He said the new app will simplify the procurement process as every process will be visible to the vendors.

"There are many issues related to approval process & speed of approval in Railways, which all are being looked into holistically by the government to make them more robust," he said.

He said the idea behind holding interactive sessions with stakeholders was to reduce entry barriers, promote competition and fairness, develop MSEs and reduce inefficiencies.

The minister and his senior officials had previously met railway contractors and listened to their grievances.