Editor
SENATE Joint Committee on the Medium Term Expenditure and Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF/FSP) has threatened to bring to order, federal agencies that fail to submit their revenue projection alongside their 2022 budget proposal.
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Solomon Adeola, who is also in charge of coordinating the joint panel, stated this after a three-day interactive sessions with heads of revenue generating agencies on the MTEF/FSP.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelAdeola specifically said agencies that fail to articulate their revenue projection in their budgets would not get any allocation in the 2022 federal budget.
The Committee directed the Minister for Finance, Zainab Ahmed to do a forensic audit of all agencies in the country, adding that the Senate was determined to raise independent revenue that targets government owned enterprises which would amount to about N2.5 trillion of the 2022 fiscal year.
Adeola said, “We will remove any agency that fails to submit its proposed revenue target with the expenditure in the 2022 budget.
“There is a public outcry that borrowings is on the high side. We are not saying that we are not going to borrow but we must reduce it. The only way to do things is to look inwards and build our revenues.
“Many of the agencies that generate revenue spend them on frivolous expenditure.
“There are three agencies of government: Those that are partly funded, those that are fully funded and those that are not funded at all.
“By law, revenues generated by fully-funded agencies must be paid to the consolidated revenue account because the government will give them the recurrent expenditure, personnel cost and capital expenditure.
“Going forward, government has decided that whatever partly-funded and not funded agencies generate, 50 per cent of such revenue will go to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF).
“We are now going to 70-30. That is, only 30 per cent will be released to the agency while 70 percent will go to the CRF. We are going to amend the law again.
“Agencies that are generating revenue which are being fully funded must ensure that everything accruing to them must go to the CRF.
“Those that are partly funded or not funded at all, the law states that 80 per cent of their operational surplus must be paid to the CRF.
“We are hereby calling on the Minister of Finance that there is a need to carry out forensic audit into the expenditure of all agencies of government. This will curb frivolous expenditure and boost the country’s revenue base.
“Already we have released N800 billion from the independent revenues generated by the agencies so far this year, it used to be about N400 million in the past. I am confident that we should be able to get up to N1.3 trillion by December.
“If we could manage to take it to N2.5 trillion in 2022, we would have taken care of one-fifth of the budget and we would not need to borrow.”
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