Politics
THE House of Representatives ad hoc Committee investigating lease of Federal Government-owned assets has asked Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) to provide evidence of its revenue generation from inception to date.
The Chairman of the committee, Rep. Daniel Asuquo (PDP-Cross River) who made the demand at the a public hearing in Abuja on Wednesday, said there was need to determine amount generated by ICRC.
Asuquo made the demand after the acting Director-General of ICRC, Mr Mike Ohaire told the committee that the agency was not generating fund as efforts were going on to develop the market.
He said the committee was out to do its job of ensuring accountability in the concession process of government assets in the country and proper remittances into the consolidated account.
“I will direct that you furnish us with all the income and revenue that has come into the consolidated accounts from the establishment of ICRC until now because we need to know when and where these monies are.
“That is the essence of this committee in the first place; we can take it that the market is developed and the committee will do its work to make sure that the ICRC cannot be spending from consolidated revenue account when you are not generating,’’ he said.
Earlier, Ohaire recalled that at commencement of operations, ICRC used to charge N5 million for Outline Business Case (OBC) and N7.5 million for Full Business Case (FBC) certificate.
He said following series of complaints from the market, the management of ICRC made a case to Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) to suspend the charges.
“What we wanted to do is to develop the market, based on that, we were not charging any fee, the only money we made and paid into the consolidated account was from sale of vehicles.
“We are not oblivious of the fact that we should charge fees and generate revenue but before we do that, we have to first develop the market and that is what we are doing.
“We generated N2.6 billion last year, so also from the silos concession, we generated N1.6 billion,’’ he said.
The acting director-general, however, pledged with the committee to allow it make the account details available for members information.
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– May 19, 2021 @ 19:19 GMT
Tags: Reps committee demands Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission’s account statement
