TheCable

The federal government says it has so far recovered N57 billion from the N5.2 trillion owed by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

Aisha Omar, director, special projects, federal ministry of finance, disclosed this during the sensitisation workshop on the federal government debt recovery drive through the project lighthouse programme for south-east zone, on Tuesday in Enugu.

According to Omar, in actualising the debt recovery goal, the federal ministry of finance initiated ‘project lighthouse’, which has enabled the relevant economic and financial information from multiple agencies who hitherto did not share data.

She said the debts came to the spotlight from data aggregated from over 5,000 debtors across more than 93 MDAs.

Omar, represented by Bridget Molokwu, the deputy director special projects, ministry of finance, said the debts were in the form of liabilities to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).

She said the ministry also received refunds to the government from companies that failed to deliver on projects for which payment had been made.

The director added that others are unpaid credit facilities granted to both corporate entities and individuals by the Bank of Industry (BOI) and Bank of Agriculture (BOA), judgment debt in favor of the government, debts owed pension transitional arrangement directorate (PTAD) by insurance companies amongst others.

Omar said data from project lighthouse revealed many companies and individuals, who owed government agencies and refused to honor their obligations, were still being paid.

This, she said, was done through the government platforms such as government integrated financial management system (GIFMIS) and treasury single account (TSA) due to lack of visibility over these transactions.

“Generally, revenue loopholes have been aided by poor information sharing and enforcement,” Omar said.

“It may interest you to note that the ministry through the consolidation efforts of the debt analytics and reporting application, has been able to aggregate monumental debts of approximately N5.2 trillion.

“The debt aggregation effort is still ongoing. Currently, approximately, N57 billion has been recovered so far from this amount due to concerted efforts on the part of stakeholders and the federal government.”

The director said a similar workshop had been held in five other geo-political zones of the country namely south- west, north-central, north-west, south-south and north-east.

She said the goal was to leverage big data technology to help block revenue loopholes, identify new revenue opportunities, optimise existing revenue streams especially non-oil revenue as well as improve fiscal transparency.

“The ministry, in this regard, has taken steps to address this major revenue loophole, through the issuance of a ministerial directive to all MDAs to aggregate all government debt across the public finance space as well as having a single window on the credit profile of government,” she said.

“Extend the functionalities of debt recovery capability of lighthouse to enable the federal ministry of finance fully automate the debt recovery process and make settlements of debts as seamless as possible.”

Omar said the revenue generation effort would be dependent on cooperation and commitment of MDAs in providing relevant information (debt-related data).