Guwahati, Nov. 16: Numaligarh Refinery Limited has introduced digitally signed invoices for its product sales transactions taking place from its Siliguri marketing terminal.

A statement issued by NRL said it is first among oil PSUs to implement this environment-friendly initiative, wh-ich would replace manually signed hard copy invoices issued on pre-printed stationery in multiple copies, thus saving paper and doing away with non-essential printing.

"On a conservative count, considering NRL's sales volume of Rs 11,000 crore annually, electronic invoicing process and digitally signing and storing will reduce printing of nearly 7 lakh pages annually, equivalent to 4.3 tonnes of paper, resulting in saving of approximately 103 numbers of trees per year," the statement said.

The first digitally signed invoice was formally launched by MD P. Padmanabhan at Numaligarh on Monday along with representatives from other oil companies. "With this, NRL has achieved 100 per cent e-invoicing which are all digitally signed and stored. No invoices are printed at its sales location in Numaligarh and Siliguri," it said.