TheCable

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) says its 2023 collection from education tax is the highest ever in a single year since its inception.

TETFund, established in 2011, disburses, manages, and monitors education tax for government-owned tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

The scheme provides supplementary support to all levels of public tertiary institutions.

The main financial inflow available to TETFund has long been the two percent education tax paid from the assessable profit of companies registered in Nigeria.

Sunny Echono, the executive secretary of TETFund, said the agency recorded its highest-ever financial inflow following the increment of education tax to three percent of company profits.

Echono spoke in Abuja on Tuesday at an interactive session with heads of beneficiary institutions on the disbursement guidelines for the 2024 intervention cycle.

He said the 2023 collection is being allocated by the fund for the 2024 intervention projects.

Speaking on the proposed areas of focus under the 2024 intervention programme, he said TETFund has budgeted a significant increase in annual direct disbursements in response to improvement in tax collections.

He said 90.54 percent of the collection generated is budgeted for direct disbursement to beneficiary institutions.

Echono said 6.5 percent is earmarked for some projects while 2.94 is meant for “stabilisation” to enable the fund to respond to emerging issues.

He added that the proposed new interventions in the annual direct disbursement include the establishment of a career unit in all categories of beneficiary institutions.

“For the special direct disbursement, we have increased the allocation and number of beneficiary institutions for the Special High Impact Programme (SHIP),” Echono said.

The executive secretary said the SHIP would focus on the provision of hostels using the public-private partnership arrangement for selected beneficiary institutions.

“We have sustained provisions for disaster recovery, security infrastructure, and completion of abandoned projects,” he added.

“We have also sustained allocations for research including the national research fund and innovation fund.

“We have made provision for four central multipurpose laboratories and an additional provision for the thee agricultural laboratories/farms initiated in 2023.

“We have sustained the implementation of the ICT roadmap with provision for converged services, subscription services for fixed cable/internet access and the TERAS initiative.”