A new set of guidelines on the implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) that most revenue generating Ministries, Departments and Agencies are seen to be resisting will be issued today by the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF). The revised guidelines is expected to incorporate expenditure by MDAs as against mere focus on revenue/receipts as the rules provide today. The new rules will also define new deadline and appropriate sanctions for non-compliance.
BusinessDay learnt that compliance has been quite slow due to resistance by some MDAs and commercial banks on account of to ignorance- others because the new system will not allow them steal monies which now becomes difficult under the TSA, a Presidency source told BusinessDay last week. “I am reissuing a treasury circular on Friday to show the guideline on the e-receipt.
“The government was focusing on receipts initially but we now want to extend it to expenditure,” Jonah Otunla, Account General of the Federation responded to BusinessDay concerns on low of compliance to the single account directive. TSA, a unified structure of government bank accounts that gives a consolidated view of government cash is expected to bring about transparency, efficiently and accountability. It is expected to encompass all receipts and payments of the government handled by MDAs, partially funded by the Federal Government and all government controlled Trust Funds and Social Security Funds.
Prior to TSA, Nigeria has fragmented banking arrangements for revenue and payment transactions. Over10,000 bank accounts were held in multiple banks, which made it impossible to establish government consolidated cash position at any point in time. This led to pockets of idle cash balances held in MDAs’ accounts when government was out borrowing money to run the economy.
The fragmented banking also affected the government’s ability to undertake efficient cash planning and management as required by the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Going by the AGF directive, all receipts by the MDAs are to be paid through electronic channels called e-Collection directly to the Consolidated Revenue Fund at the Central Bank of Nigeria through electronic channels, through a process called the e-Collection.
