By Dipo Olowookere
The Accountant-General of the Federation, Mr Ahmed Idris has noted that the quality of leadership provided by President Muhammadu Buhari, which he described as rare courage and political will is a major reason for the successes so far achieved by the Treasury Single Account policy implementation.
The AGF made this disclosure during his welcome Address at the opening of a two day retreat on the one year of the TSA implementation (the benefits, challenges and way forward) being organised by his office at the International Conference Centre Abuja from 14-15 February, 2017.
Highlighting the successes of the TSA, Mr Idris revealed that the sum of N5.244 trillion has so far been realized as inflows in the TSA account following the moping -up and direct debits of Accounts by the Central bank of Nigeria.
Mr Idris further said that TSA has eliminated multiple banking arrangements in the MDAS and resulted in the consolidation of over 20,000 bank accounts which were spread in Deposit Money Banks across the country.
He added that the TSA has equally 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,” the AGF said.
Furthermore, Mr Idris revealed that given the considerable gains so far recorded in the TSA implementation, there was 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 was 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, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, 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.
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 however 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 of Access Bank, Mr Herbert Wigwe, and representative of the Governor of Anambra State and syndicate sessions which provided the platform for brainstorming on the way forward.
Adedapo Adesanya