The Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF), Mr. Ahmed Idris has announced that the sum of N5.244 trillion has so far been realized as inflows in the Treasury Single Account (TSA), following the moping -up and direct debits of Accounts by the Central bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The AGF who spoke at the opening of a two day retreat on the one year of the TSA implementation ( the benefits, challenges and way forward), organized by his office at the International Conference Centre Abuja, said that TSA has eliminated multiple banking arrangements in the MDAS and resulted in the consolidation of over 200,000 bank accounts which were spread in Deposit Money Banks across the country.
He said that TSA has also brought transparency, effective tracking of Government revenue as well as blocked leakages and abuse in management of Government finances.
“TSA implementation has taken us out of the Era of indiscriminate borrowings by MDAS and saved Government charges associated borrowing which amounted to about N4.7 Billion prior to full Implementation of TSA.”
Ahmed Idris said that given the considerable gains so far recorded in the TSA implementation, there is need to evaluate the programme and come up with best ways of improving the Policy, which is the reason for the retreat.
He gave assurance that government is considering going beyond the Cash Management of TSA but will explore other viable economic options of resource utilization and deployment especially in this era of economic recession.
In a speech to declare open the Retreat, the Acting President, Professor Yemi Osibanjo, represented by the Special Adviser on Economic Affairs , Dr. Adeyemi, Dipelu, congratulated the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and its partners, particularly the IMF and the World Bank for their successful implementation of the TSA.
He underscored the importance of the TSA scheme as being instrumental to the efficient management of Public finances and pledged Government’s commitment towards ensuring improvement in the implementation of the Programme.
The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun in her speech highlighted the benefits of the TSA saying that it has enhanced greater opportunity in exercising better control over the financial base of MDAs and allows for critical decisions to be made.
Mrs. Adeosun, explained that attempts are being made to expand the scheme by engaging statutory cooperation to come on board in order to adopt the scheme but identified the major challenge as the uncooperative attitude of some Deposit Money Banks who are still keeping some government funds in their custody.
She said that Government has been engaging them on the need to transfer funds without identity to the TSA and for the recalcitrant ones, government was making efforts to engage auditors to keep a tab on such funds.
There were presentations from MD Access Bank Mr Herbert Wigwe and Rep. Of the Gov of Anambra state and syndicate sessions which provided the platform for brainstorming on the way forward. Kenechukwu Offie (Mrs ) Director Information OAGF 14th February 2017. PRNigeria encourages institutions to be transparent in their information management as it provides news items from authoritative sources for free use by the media. [myad]
