Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Computer Application Centre, Orissa e-Governance Services Ltd on Thursday signed a MoU with four private electricity distribution companies- CESU, NESCO, WESCO and Southco for Online payment of electricity bills by consumers.

Energy ministers Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak, Ramesh Majhi and senior officers of the IT and energy department were present.

It was announced that during the current financial year five to 10 per cent physical bill collection will be converted to online mode and over the next two to three years 80 to 90 per cent of the bill collection will be done online.

Online electricity bill payment is the first step in line with the e-governance model and 8,588 common service centres are being established in the state in a public private participation mode.

These centres would be the front-end service delivery points in rural areas for various government to citizen services, business to citizen and business to business services. More than 4000 common service centres are already operational in the state.