Nigeria’s Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun

The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun has described the Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy as a success story, saying the Federal Government is determined to expand it to more agencies in 2017.

According to a statement by the Special Adviser, Media, Mr Festus Akanbi on Tuesday in Abuja, she said this at the opening of a two-day retreat on TSA.

Adeosun said that the Federal Government would expand the programme and continue to persuade statutory agencies to come under it.

She said that the Federal Government was already discussing with service providers with the aim of improving the implementation and functionality of the policy because of its huge benefits.

She added that the Federal Government would be reaching out to TSA service providers to allow other e-commerce and e-payment providers access the platform.

This, she said was very important to make the TSA as competitive as possible in terms of pricing.

”One of the challenges that we have is who should bear the cost of the TSA?

”Currently, it is being borne centrally but that is not sustainable but we are now working on how to stratify the various agencies.

”Those who should bear their own costs and costs that should be borne by the government and this will be rolled out this year.”

The minister disclosed that through the implementation of the whistleblower policy, it was revealed that some banks had not fully remitted government funds in their possession.

She, however, said that the Federal Government, through the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation had issued circulars to those banks to comply.

“There are still funds in commercial banks and we have written to the banks, giving them a window to come forward.

”Where in doubt, they have been asked to consult us.

”We also have an audit team that has started the process of checking the completeness of monies that were transferred into the TSA and already, they have been able to recover a significant amount of money.”

Adeosun said that the TSA was here to stay, adding that the policy, which she described as an important reform of the current administration, allowed government to reduce its borrowing costs.

“The policy allows us to manage our treasury functions with far more accuracy than what we had in the past.

”There is still a long way to go but overall, we are very satisfied with the progress we have made and we look forward to it being extended and utilised far more as the year goes on,” the minister said.

(NAN)