'Bahrain is a small country and we do not have mass production, but we are talking of savings of 90 to 95 per cent on overhead costs,' Mohammed al-Qaed told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa this week.
The government also hopes to double the number of users who have residential internet access, some 33 per cent at present, over the next three years, al-Qaed said.
The e-government portal is expected to streamline business within the government ministries and agencies, the spokesman said. Since it was launched last month, usage of the portal has increased payment for government services via the internet by 280 per cent, officials said.
Although the system is too new to give an estimate of the savings so far, al-Qaed quoted studies by German institutions and the United Nations that gave a measure of what might be expected.
For example, a single government transaction for electricity and water that would cost on average Bahraini Dinar (BD) 3 (8 US dollars) can be reduced to 600 Fils (1.6 dollars) using electronic banking and only 200 fils (0.5 dollars) if conducted via the e- government portal, according to the studies cited by al-Qaed.
The savings would be quite large, given that the government spent BD 100 thousand last month alone to pay for electrical services.
On the private side, more than 50 per cent of Bahrainis have some kind of internet access at present, and according to al-Qaed the government plans to provide free internet access at various government locations around the island in coming months.
He added that they were currently working to allow for and expand existing electronic payments of various municipal, court, and customs services.
At present the eGovernment gateway www.e.gov.bh offers 167 government services to the public.
Al-Qaed's comments came on the sidelines of a signing ceremony Wednesday in Manama that officially inaugurated a system to enable debit card holders, who are around three times the number of credit card users in Bahrain, to make payments via the ePayment gateway.
The move is expected to create a great jump in usage of the e-government portal by enabling over 70 per cent of the Gulf island's residents to make payments through it.
Director of Treasure at the Ministry of Finance, Nabeel al-Doy, who signed the agreement on behalf of the government with Al Ahli United Bank, pointed out that his government was the first Arab government to accept credit card payments for government services via the ministries' websites as early as 1997.
Yearly income from credit card payments in the ministries of Bahrain has reached BD30 million a year, al-Doy told the press conference.
'We are expecting these figures to double in coming years following the introduction of the e-government portal,' he said.
Quelle/Source: Monsters and Critics, 30.06.2007
