“I think it is a great effort. We are learning a lot from India. You are now building a bio information and then you are providing direct subsidy without any intermediary. That would significantly reduce corruption and inefficiencies,”
Asian Development Bank (ADB) Chief Economist Changyong Rhee told a media conference in Greater Noida on Saturday.
“We at ADB will really push this idea to other developing countries as a way to enhance public finance and as a way to enhance transparency,” he said.
Rhee said public service delivery in the Asian region has improved remarkably in the last 30-40 years due to rapid growth. However, he said slowdown may have a negative impact on the public delivery system and called for better targeting of subsidies.
“Countries need to shift from general targeting to focused targeting approach as lion’s share of the subsidies are taken away by the rich,” Rhee said adding the leakage in the current Public Distribution System (PDS) in India is enormous.
The government rolled out the DBT scheme from 1st January in 43 districts in the first phase.
The scheme would now be extended to 78 more districts from July as will be expanded to include LPG subsidy in a phased manner to cover 20 districts by 15th May.