PHOENIX — A major improvement in how Arizona handles food stamp applications has netted the state a $2 million bonus.

 The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday said the state’s error rate in processing requests for aid in 2007 was less than 4.9 percent. That compares with a national figure in excess of 5.6 percent.

 But Allen Ng, regional administrator of the national agency, said the real news is the improvement from 2006 when the error rate approached 8.7 percent. And that resulted in a $1.5 million penalty against the state Department of Economic Security.

 Those 2006 problems, however, only came to light with Monday’s press conference where Ng presented DES with a $2 million check as a reward for being among the states with the bigges improvement. There was no such announcement — or even press release — about the fine.

 The state’s sharp improvement record also brought another financial bonus.

 Ng said the Department of Agriculture agreed to let the state use half of that $1.5 million penalty to make improvements in how it processes applications for food stamps. And he said payment of the other half of the fine was held in abeyance to see if the state could meet its target of reducing the error rate to 5.7 percent or less.

 “So that’s forgiven,’’ he said.

 All of the benefits are paid for by the federal government. The cost of operating the program is shared by the state and federal governments, which is how the Department of Agriculture gets to either withhold funds or provide bonuses.

 DES Director Tracy Wareing said the state’s poor performance can be blamed on a sharp increase in the number of people seeking aid.

 According to DES, there were 102,307 food stamp cases in 2001. By last year that had risen to 218,381. At the same time, Wareing said, the number of staffers processing the applications was not growing.

 That 2006 fine — and the chance to use some of that money fo improvements — provided the opportunity to change the way o doing business.

 “We really had to reinvent the way we did our work,’’ she said.

 She said focus was put on offices with the highest error rates and with the largest number of applications being processed.

 Wareing said DES hired additional staff and increased training.

 And she said the $2 million bonus, which will go to DES, wil allow the agency to “ensure ... that the taxpayer dollars are being accurately and appropriately distributed to folks who need these critical nutrition services.’’

 Wareing also said there was another factor that resulted in th state’s poor showing in 2006: DES had agreed in 2004 to speed up processing of food stamp applications to end a lawsuit against the agency.

 That agreement requires the agency to monitor applications to comply with federal law that requires states to approve or reject all requests for aid within 30 days. That same law mandates that requests by the most needy be handled within seven days.

 Attorney Ellen Katz who represented a food stamp recipient, said when the lawsuit was filed only 70 percent of requests for aid were handled on time.