The Federal Government officially commenced the operation of a Treasury Single Account on Monday, 17th of September 2015 during the first tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari. This effectively moved about N1.2 trillion from Nigerian Banks to the Central Bank of Nigeria.
For most Nigerians, this decision is a bold attempt at stifling corruption and ensuring government revenue is effectively mobilised and monitored. However, the TSA does have well documented advantages and have been implemented in so many countries around the world.
The International Monetary Fund, an international organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 189 countries working to foster global monetary cooperation, in a 2010 paper titled Treasury Single Account: Concept, Design, and Implementation Issues outlined the benefits of operating a Treasury Single Account.
It started by explaining that the primary objective of a TSA is to ensure effective aggregate control over government cash balances.
Here are the benefits;
1. Allows complete and timely information on government cash resources.
In countries with advanced payment and settlement systems and an Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) with adequate interfaces with the banking system, this information will be available in real time. As a minimum, complete updated balances should be available daily.
2. Improves appropriation control.
The TSA ensures that the MoF has full control over budget allocations, and strengthens the authority of the budget appropriation. When separate bank accounts are maintained, the result is often a fragmented system, where funds provided for budgetary appropriations are augmented by additional cash resources that become available through various creative, often extra-budgetary, measures.
3. Improves operational control during budget execution.
When the treasury has full information about cash resources, it can plan and implement budget execution in an efficient, transparent, and reliable manner. The existence of uncertainty regarding whether the treasury will have sufficient funds to finance programmed expenditures may lead to sub-optimal behavior by budget entities, such as exaggerating their estimates for cash needs or channeling expenditures through off-budget arrangements.
4. Enables efficient cash management.
TSA facilitates regular monitoring of government cash balances. It also enables higher quality cash out-turn analysis to be undertaken (e.g., identifying causal factors of variances and distinguishing causal factors from random variations in cash balances).
5. Reduces bank fees and transaction costs.
Reducing the number of bank accounts results in lower administrative cost for the government for maintaining these accounts, including the cost associated with bank reconciliation, and reduced banking fees.
6. Facilitates efficient payment mechanisms.
A TSA ensures that there is no ambiguity regarding the volume or the location of the government funds, and makes it possible to monitor payment mechanisms precisely. It can result in substantially lower transaction costs because of economies of scale in processing payments.
The establishment of a TSA is usually combined with elimination of the “float” in the banking and the payment systems, and the introduction of transparent fee and penalty structures for payment services. Many governments have achieved substantial reductions in their real cost of banking services by introducing a TSA.
7. Improves bank reconciliation and quality of fiscal data.
A TSA allows for effective reconciliation between the government accounting systems and cash flow statements from the banking system. This reduces the risk of errors in reconciliation processes, and improves the timeliness and quality of the fiscal accounts.
8. Lowers liquidity reserve needs.
A TSA reduces the volatility of cash flows through the treasury, thus allowing it to maintain a lower cash reserve/buffer to meet unexpected fiscal volatility.
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TSA enables transparency
This curbs corruption and alows for accountabilty, transparency and efficient government funds management.
TSA a good idea but it is not free of pitfalls anyway. What happens when you do NOT have a trusted leader like Buhari? What will the system abuse look like? Salary & pension biometrics is a reference point. Corrupt Nigerians will develope a way out like the 1% so called commission, Cash for hand & refund through contract inflation etc. What we need is strong & transparent institutional financial framework supported by cashlite practicable limits in real term not just on paper. Strong money laundering laws against cash based transaction limits.
Please you people have done a great job here, one thing left is to include the of some countries that has also been using the TSA, thanks