TSA: FG unleashes anti-graft agencies on banks, MDAs

Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) colluding with deposit money banks (DMBs) to circumvent the Federal Government’s Treasury Single Account (TSA) enforcement are in trouble.

The Federal Government hinted yesterday that it had begun compiling the list of such MDAs and banks for onward submission to anti-corruption agencies for enforcement.

The policy has, so far, led to generation of N86 billion revenue between January and October 2021 and aggregate collection of N7 trillion from 22 million transactions between January and November 2021.

Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, disclosed this as government moves to tackle challenges that have assailed the seven years old policy with formal inauguration of TSA supervisory board and the induction of TSA implementation committee.

With exemption of West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) and Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited for their “selected accounts” the minister said no other MDA or fund of Federal Government is exempted from the TSA.

She tasked agency in doubt about “the status of any account of Federal Government MDA in your custody, re-confirm from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.”

“In 2018, we conducted a post implementation compliance exercise to determine the extent to which MDAs and deposit money banks complied with the Presidential directive on TSA of August 7, 2015.

“The finding was that huge amounts of public funds were still trapped in commercial banks. It has been reported that the banks have not been co-operating with the consultants assigned to sweep these funds to the TSA. “I, therefore, take this opportunity to call on the affected banks to transfer all remaining balances in the accounts of Federal Government owned MDAs in their custody without express exemption to the TSA.

“We are compiling the list of affected banks and MDAs for submission to anti-corruption agencies for enforcement. For the avoidance of doubt, except for selected accounts of NNPC and WAEC, no other MDA or fund of Federal Government is exempted from the TSA. If in doubt about the status of any account of Federal Government MDA in your custody, re-confirm from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.

“We are aware of the challenges MDAs have been facing since early December, 2020 with respect to access to TSA bank statement and creation of service types for collection. I, hereby call on the Inter-Ministerial TSA Implementation Committee to prioritise solution to these challenges so that MDAs can reconcile and prepare their end-of-year financial statements in good time.

In line with our desire for ICT driven processes, we charge the Committee to ensure that the solution is one that enables MDAs to access detailed bank statements online and on-demand while at the same granting unfettered online and on-demand access to all MDA TSA bank statements to the Treasury”, she directed.

The minister said as last count, 16 agencies are covered and more will be added in the coming months. “The impact on government internally generated revenue performance has been impressive.

Between January and October 2021, a total of N86 billion in revenue was generated through this means. Aggregate collection of N7 trillion was made from 22 million transactions between January and November, 2021while N19 trillion worth of payments were processed from 20 million transactions within the same period.

“This goes to show the enormous volume of transactions processed on the TSA platform and the need to leverage on the onboarding of additional PSSPs to reduce the cost of collection which is currently N150 per transaction.

 Government is of the opinion that there is sufficient room for reduction in cost of collection to no more than N50 per transaction. I strongly believe that given the volume of transactions, N50 per transaction is fair consideration for collection services (New Telegraph)