As a way of further blocking ways of revenue leakages, President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered his ministers to closely monitor Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs.
He gave this directive yesterday at the first meeting of the Federal Executive Council, FEC, for this year which took place inside the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, who disclosed this to the State House correspondents at the end of the meeting which lasted about an hour, denied reports that the 2016 budget had been withdrawn from the National Assembly, explaining that it is a normal process worldwide that amendments could be made on the document when it is being defended.
She revealed that the President charged ministers to be mindful of their responsibilities as enshrined in the Fiscal Responsibility Act, FRA, and keep the MDAs under check as the Federal Government had discovered that many revenue-generating agencies have not be remitting the revenues generated to government’s coffers.
The Minister, while noting that some of the agencies have been discovered to be spending government money without control, said, “The principal discussion in our meeting today was the initiative by this administration to plug revenue leakages in our MDAs that generate revenue. The presentation to FEC was to remind ministers who supervise these revenue-generating boards of their responsibilities under the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
“Let me remind you that under FRA, these boards and corporations which generate revenue are supposed to generate and operate surplus, 80 per cent of which is to be credited to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
“But we have discovered that many agencies have never credited anything and never generated any operating surplus including some whose salaries, overheads, capital are paid by the Federal Government. In addition to that, they generate revenue which they spend without any form of control,” she said.
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