Managing Supply Chain Better: Himachal Pradesh State Civil Supplies Corporation

The HP State Civil Supplies Corporation Limited established on 6 September 1980 as a wholly owned government company under the Companies Act., 1956. The Corporation has its registered office and head office at Shimla with 2 Divisional, 7 Area and 2 Cement Procurement offices in the State. The Board of Directors headed by Chairman constitutes the top Management of the Corporation. The executive head of the Corporation is its Managing Director. The Corporation has an authorised share capital of s8 crore and subscribed & paid up capital of s3.51 crore. Since its inception the Corporation has reported profits every year and is paying regular dividend to the State Government. The Turnover of the Corporation during FY-2017-18 was 1,540 crore (un-audited). The distribution/sales network of the corporation consists of 117 Wholesale Godowns, 72 Retail Shops, 29 Medicine Shops, 54 LPG Agencies and 4 Petrol Pumps across the state of Himachal Pradesh. The Corporation is always striving to achieve excellence in all its operations by continually improving the systems and their effectiveness, developing and upgrading human resources, utilising efficiencies of IT, adopting a proactive approach in anticipating customer needs and expectations and ensuring customer satisfaction.

Under the dynamic leadership of its Chairman Kishan Kapoor, Minister of Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs, Government of Himachal Pradesh, able guidance of Principal Secretary, F, CS & CA to the government. Onkar Sharma, IAS and managerial excellence of its Managing Director, S S Guleria IAS, HP State Civil Supplies Corporation Limited, has achieved excellence through adoption and execution of efficient, transparent and beneficiary centric system of Indenting, Procurement, Transportation, Storage and Distribution and Sales of different essential commodities under Public Distribution System and supplies to various government departments, by developing and implementing, online Supply Chain Management System in the state under its computerisation project ITA-HPSCSC, hosted in State Data Centre of Department of IT Himachal Pradesh.

The Supply Chain Management System implemented since October 2015, covers online transaction processing of the Demand, Procurement, Despatches, Receipts, Sales, Realisations and generation of MIS reports on real time basis. The Corporation is adopting e-Tendering portal of NIC for procurement. The Corporation has establishment Quality Control Mechanism for ensuring quality of the items supplied. The Corporation is pursuing continuous introduction of new items, e.g., non-controlled branded items and items on consignment basis. The Corporation has taken New initiatives, e.g., introducing messaging (text & voice) to FPS owners and beneficiaries, for conveying the receipt of stocks at godowns and issue of stocks to the Fair Price Shops (FPS) for further issue to the beneficiaries of the State, installation of CCTV cameras in godowns, VTS on commercial vehicles and provision of wooden storage racks in godowns. The system ensures online availability of crucial information for decision making at different levels, faster procurements and sales realisations. The Corporation has achieved excellence in its operations given the constraints like Internet connectivity, power deficiency and non-availability of requisite trained manpower.

Online availability of information is crucial for decision making at different levels. Manpower savings and timely procurement and faster sale realisation as well as effective delivery system to the consumers has made the entire supply chain efficient and effective. Entire population of the state of Himachal Pradesh, i.e., about 71 lakh people are being served by the Corporation being only nodal procurement agency.

The primary function assigned to the Corporation is that of a central procurement agency for all the controlled and non-controlled essential commodities at the wholesale level and further to distribute these commodities through the District Co-operative Federations or the Tehsil Co-operative Unions (which function as sub-wholesalers ); and, where these are weak or do not exist, to distribute directly to the FPS.

Besides this, Corporation undertakes trading, storage, movement (including inter-state movement) and distribution of such other essential commodities, which may be required as per demand from consumer in general, from time to time so as to ensure their availability in the open market at reasonable rates.