Even as the Keralam government has been stressing on reducing expenditure, the Electronics and IT department has enhanced the expenditure ceiling limit for procurement of IT hardware for official use of Ministers and other government officials. The expenditure ceiling on IT hardware has been enhanced from ₹1.5 lakh to ₹2 lakh.

The order issued by Electronics and IT department Special Secretary Seeram Sambasiva Rao on Thursday says the hike in ceiling limit was necessitated by the considerable increase in the market rates of common IT hardware owing to global price hikes, inflationary pressures, currency fluctuations and escalating component costs driven by emerging technologies.

The enhanced ceiling will be for Ministers, private secretaries to Ministers, officers holding various posts in the Secretariat, All India Service officers and heads of departments and institutions. The earlier ceiling limit was fixed as per an order issued in 2023.

In the case of purchase of computers, laptops, printers and other IT hardware for various government departments, institutions and public sector units, the State government had in 2018 implemented the Centralised Procurement Rate Contract System (CPRCS). The government had again in 2019 mandated that procurement should only be done through the CPRCS after noticing that some departments and institutions were continuing to purchase IT hardware directly.