As the management of Treasury Single Account ((TSA) dominates Thursday’s interactive session between the Senate Committee on Finance and the Federal Ministry of Finance in the ongoing budget Defence, Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun has said that the company managing the transfer to the Treasury Single Account (TSA) was not responsible for charging Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) with regard to transfer fees.
Adeosun who was responding to questions from the Senate Committee on Finance Chaired by Sen. John Eno, however, clarified that only about N8 billion was actually deducted.
The Minister insisted that the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation should take full responsibility of the charges instead of MDAs, stressing that it should have been paid a reasonable amount by a central agency of government.
“The N25 billion that was allegedly paid out was actually incorrect, it was about N8 billion that was paid and it has been refunded because there was no basis for the deduction.
“I think that it should be within the Federal Government, it should be paid by the Office of the Accountant General because we are the beneficiaries.
“For consistency and monitoring, it makes sense to centralise those charges: TSA also needs to be monitored, it is a system that is sweeping money, and before we pay them, we must verify the volume.
“It is the AGF that should bear the cost on behalf of the MDAs because it is a national initiative,” she said.
Adeosun added that the budget for payment of the consultant would be drawn from the Service Wide Votes as it was not represented in the budget of the ministry or other relevant agencies.
She added that the ministry was waiting for the conclusion of the investigations of the Senate and other industry consultations to reach an agreement on what to pay for the service.
“We are waiting on the industry’s stand as to what the real charge should be, because with a N6 trillion budget, if all that money is passing through TSA, we have to have an idea of the cost throughout the year,” she said.
She added that government will begin to demand discount from service providers such as airline companies, insisting that government at different evel is still one customer.
She insisted that government agencies spend a lot of money on travels, trainings, stationery and as such the ministry had decided to get a recommended standard of pricing.
“We have called in a lot of companies, airlines, newspapers and we have said to them; look government is one customer and now we want a bulk discount on anything government buys,” she said.
However, the Chairman of the Committee, Sen. John Eno insisted that the Senate had not concluded its investigation into the allegation adding that the ministry should await the Senate report.
Commenti