July 24, 2002	Wednesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 13,1423

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RAWALPINDI, July 23: The Punjab government has decided to round off the figures to discard paisa from its accounts and payments, a letter issued by the office of the Punjab accountant general stated.

This decision had been taken because of the non-availability of coins of smaller denominations.

All the transactions of the Punjab government would be rounded off to the nearest rupee by omitting fractions not exceeding 49 paisa. Transactions exceeding 49 paisa would be treated as Re 1.

The directives stated that only the total amount payable and receivable in a single transaction would be rounded off.

The amounts would be rounded off in cases of salaries, allowances, pensions or travelling allowance. According to the rules in cases of emoluments and pensions of government servants under the law and interest charges on public debt, the paisa fraction would be rounded off to the nearest rupee.

“The receipt of revenue, which are fixed by or under any law or as specifically exempted by the government from operation of rule 4.10 of Punjab, the rounding off shall be made in accordance with the provisions of the relevant law,” the directive stated.

Another notification issued by the office of the accountant general stated that in view of the decision to eliminate paisa from government accounts, in future all bills submitted for pre- audit should be prepared after rounding off the amount.

“No bill with amounts in paisas would be accepted for audit,” it stated.

Paisa has already become non-existent in day to day commercial business activity and have virtually lost their worth following devaluation of rupee.

The government has recently launched Re 1 and Rs 2 coins, which are used as the smallest denomination of the currency instead of the paisa. Government is planning to launch coins of Rs 5 in the near future.