Economy
THE Nigerian government saves over N45 billion monthly on interests through the implementation of the Treasury Single Account, TSA, and the centralisation of multiple bank accounts, Sylva Okolieaboh, the director of TSA, Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, OAGF, has said.
Okolieaboh said during a session with a Gambian delegation, who are in Nigeria to understudy the country’s TSA and key players in Nigeria’s FinTech sector on Monday.
He said the Gambians came to Nigeria because they discovered that the country had made tremendous progress in implementing the TSA coupled with the advice by the International Monetary Fund, IMF.
“In a country like Nigeria, where people don’t obey ordinary traffic rules, for you to bring in all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, thousands of them scattered all over the country into the TSA, and you are making savings of over N45 billion monthly on interest, I think that is something somebody somewhere will notice,” he said.
He also said the Nigerian government was ready to support the Gambia to ensure a successful TSA implementation in the West African country.
Speaking on the compliance level of Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, Okolieaboh said: “It is almost 100 percent in terms of compliance, with the exception of a few agencies, practically everybody is on board.”
According to him, there is still room for improvement, especially with Nigeria’s foreign missions.
He disclosed that in addition to the Gambia, Ethiopia and Kenya are among countries that also want to learn about the TSA from Nigeria.
A key member of the Gambian delegation and Accountant General of the country, Momodou Lamin Bah, said that the greatest challenge facing the Gambia on TSA implementation was how to deploy an efficient payment gateway technology.
According to Lamin Bah, the Gambian delegation is in Nigeria to understudy the TSA which the Federal Government of Nigeria has implemented over the past few years.
He said that they had also reviewed some literature from the IMF and also used Nigeria’s experience as a case study on their capacity building and Public Finance Management, PFM.
Meanwhile, the technology providers of the federal government’s TSA policy, SystemSpecs had expressed its readiness to transform other African countries with the strategic deployment of its solutions.
Demola Igbalajobi, the divisional head, Payment Gateway and Infrastructure at SystemSpecs, told journalists during a breakaway session, that penetrating other markets across the continent was principal to the activities of the company.
“Over the last few years, SystemSpecs has actually been looking at Africa as the next frontier for us, we have been engaging a few governments in Africa on TSA based on our experience in Nigeria. So we are ready to deploy our solution within a matter of weeks to any country that is ready to adopt our payroll payment gateway for their TSA,’’ he said. – Independent
May 21, 2019 @ 13:19 pm GMT|
Tags: Adebayo Shittu MTN NSE Sylva Okolieaboh SystemSpecs Umar Danbatta
