ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Industries and Production Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtyar on Monday said the government would provide targeted subsidies to Ehsaas Programme beneficiaries at the Utility Stores Corporation by linking their Ehsaas Cards/national identity cards with sales points.

The minister was presiding over a meeting about the progress of digitalisation and automation programme of the Utility Stores Corporation. The digitisation process is being executed under the Digital Pakistan Initiative.

Briefing the minister on digitisation, Utility Stores Corporation’s managing director Syed Taha Aziz said that digitisation of human resource record and provisions of providing targeted subsidy would be finalised by the end of the month.

He said that digitisation covered several aspects of the USC operations such as enterprise resource planning, supply chain, warehousing, and finance and deployment of machines at points of sales in retail outlets.

He also informed the minister that the USC had completed the automation of Utility Stores in Islamabad region, shifting 20 per cent of its total sales to automation.

Reviewing progress of the USC’s digitisation, the minister said the government would provide targeted subsidies at the Utility Stores Corporation for the Ehsaas Programme beneficiaries by linking their Ehsaas Cards/national identity cards with the sales points.

The minister appreciated the USC team and said this project would be the largest digitalisation programme of any public sector company in the country.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2021