Tsa: Senate Insists On N7bn Refund To Fg

Source: thewillnigeria.com

SAN FRANCISCO, February 24, (THEWILL) – The Senate has received the report of the Joint Committee on Finance, Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions, and Public Accounts on the abuse and mismanagement of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) regime and called for the refund of about N7 billion to the Federal Government.

The report also called for the termination of the 2013 renewal contract between the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and SystemSpecs – a Lagos-based software firm, which provided the e-Payment/e-Collection solution used for transfer of government money by banks to the TSA.

The Senate had on November 11, 2015, debated a motion on 'Abuse and Mismanagement of the TSA regime' and referred the matter to the joint committee to carry out a holistic investigation.

Presenting the report at plenary on Wednesday, the Chairman of the joint committee, John Enoh, said that the Federal Government was defrauded to the tune of N6,994,421,466 between March 1 and October 27, 2015.

Consequently, the committee recommended that N656,504,100 be provided as transaction cost for fund transfers/collections for the period instead of N7,650,925,566 saying it was arrived at using the approved band of N700 per transaction for 937,869 transactions between March 1 and November 30, 2015.

“With an estimated total transfer of over N2.5 trillion by the end of 2015, baring the Senate resolution halting further deductions, the Federal Government could have paid about N25 billion to the platform provider, based on the charge of 1 percent transaction fee for all transactions/collections,” Enoh said.

The Senate also spoke against the practice of Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) bearing the cost of payment for e-collection service, saying this should not be borne by MDAs but provided and disbursed from a central pool.

It therefore asked that the amount arrived at should be forwarded to the National Assembly for accommodation in the 2016 budget and directed the CBN to ensure a total refund of the portion of the deduction retained by the apex bank and Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), with the sharing formula of 50 percent of the 1 percent collection fee due to SystemSpecs, 40 percent to DMBs and 10 percent to the CBN.

The report revealed that out of the N7.651 billion deducted within the period as cost for collection, SystemSpecs collected N3.824 billion, DMBs N3.062 billion and CBN N764 million.

Story by David Oputah