The Accountant-General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, has revealed that total revenue of ₦8.9 trillion from Ministries, Departments and Agencies MDAs of government has been recorded by the Federal Government since the commencement of the Treasury Single Accounts TSA in 2016.
Benefits of TSA?
Idris noted that the TSA was established by the government to unify all its accounts by ensuring that monies belonging to it were kept with the Central Bank of Nigeria.
This according to Idris, led to the closure of over 17,000 bank accounts, while huge sums of money had been moved from Deposit Money Banks to the CBN.
While noting the benefits of TSA, he said the policy has been able to assist the government in addressing a lot of impediments affecting the efficiency of public finance.
Despite the initial apathy to the directive by some revenue generating MDAs its introduction has helped the government to overcome the burden of uncontrolled borrowings by the MDAs, hence, saving the government a lot of bank charges associated with these borrowings.
However, approval for the exemption of some accounts was given to some agencies including West African Examination Council (WAEC) and Joint Venture Accounts of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) because of other partners involved in the operations of the accounts.
In his words:
“All collections are done through electronic channels and we have recorded ₦8.9tn gross inflow to date with 1,674 MDAs enrolled”
He recalled how over ₦70bn of Federal Government funds were lost to failed banks in the past.
Unpaid charges to Systemspecs
The Accountant-General also lamented the non-payment of SystemSpecs, the service provider for Remita- the platform on which the apex bank coordinates all accounts linked to the TSA.
Under the terms of the service, SystemSpecs is entitled to one percent of each inbound transaction and up to ₦5,000 for each outbound transaction.
The firm was last paid in 2016, while as of December 2017, the total outstanding against SystemSpecs was in excess of ₦10bn for outbound services.This excluded the ₦7.6bn it initially earned as service fee but was later directed by the CBN to refund the money because there were issues to be reconciled.
He, however, assured that efforts are ongoing to resolve the issues and pay SystemSpecs for its services.
Treasury Single Account is a public accounting system of government where all government revenues are paid into the Consolidated Revenue Account (CRA) at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The objective of TSA is to appropriately capture all government revenues. The policy was instituted by the Goodluck Jonathan administration, but implemented by President Buhari on assumption of office.
