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By Chinwendu Obienyi
In the light of Nigeria’s dwindling revenue and its attendant economic challenges, experts have said it is high time the Federal Government optimised its Treasury Single Account (TSA) programme, the scheme designed mainly to block financial leakages, and improve transparency and accountability across the country’s public sector institutions.
According to them, the TSA which was introduced in 2012 by the Jonathan Goodluck administration, has come a long way with the potential to deliver more benefits to the nation’s economy.
An optimised TSA provides comprehensive and timely information on government cash resources and improves appropriation and operational control during budget execution.
It also enables efficient cash management, eliminates bank charges, reduces transaction costs, facilitates efficient payment mechanisms, and improves bank reconciliation and quality of fiscal data.
TSA also lowers liquidity reserve needs and reduces the volatility of cash flow through the treasury, thus allowing the maintenance of a lower cash reserve and buffer to meet unexpected fiscal volatility.
It was however learnt that the TSA is currently running just about 40 per cent of its capacity despite its recognition as one of Africa’s most successful TSA implementations.
Experts who spoke to Daily Sun, said there is an urgent need to optimise the operational processes, rules of engagement and the underlying payment technology and systems.
An economist, Andrew Etoto, tasked the new Acting Accountant General of Federation (OAGF), Okolieaboh Sylva, to effectively drive the optimisation of TSA.
“Okolieaboh Sylva is Mr. TSA himself. The TSA scheme is his baby and there is no way he would watch it flounder,” he said.
Another analyst, Clement Bako, described Sylva as a public sector reformist and charged him to activate the foreign currency component of TSA which for unexplainable reasons has remained un-implemented over the 10 years that TSA has been operational in Nigeria.
“This will enable all payments and collections in foreign currency to be visible to government as applicable for local currency.”
Also, the AGF is also expected to upscale and optimize the national electronic Invoicing and electronic Receipting system which has always been part of Nigeria’s TSA design. This will ensure all government payables are monitored from a single point which leads to more effective national cash flow planning.
With the implementation of the national electronic receipting, every payment to the government would be verifiable from any government agency located anywhere in the country as there would be only a single version of the truth of government revenues and income”, Bako said.
He further said, “The new Acting AGF is expected to undertake the review and optimization of IPPIS, especially in light of allegations that the centralized system has become disjointed and subject to abuse at different levels.
“As a subset of the TSA system, the integrity of IPPIS should be re-affirmed as a reliable government payroll system for which the Accountant General has primary responsibility”.
