Muda Yusuf, the Director-General of Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, LCCI, has called for a review of operation of The Single Treasury Account (TSA) to allow easier access to the funds.
He said decentralisation of the account would allow government agencies to have easier access to the funds and resolve the current dearth of funds in these agencies.
Mr. Yusuf spoke at the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, Forum in Lagos on Sunday while reviewing the two-year performance of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
TSA is a public accounting system where all revenues, receipts and incomes of all revenue generating agencies of government are pooled in a single account in the central bank.
It was introduced by the federal government in 2012 to check abuses of revenues generated by some agencies of government.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that more than N7 trillion has accrued into the account since its introduction in 2012.
Mr. Yusuf said that the TSA had its advantages, but the over-centralisation in Nigeria had created bottlenecks in the releases of funds and was hampering activities of MDAs.
“A structure that is over-centralised will have bottlenecks and when you have bottlenecks, you are likely to have all manners of abuses including extortion tendencies.
“The bottleneck has slowed down the operation of MDAs, made their system less efficient and lacked planning because the resources might not be made available on time due to bureaucracy.
“It is easy for funds to go into the account, but it is often difficult for it to come out because of the excessive centralisation,” he said.
Mr. Yusuf said that there was the need for the Federal Government to evolve a model in the TSA structure that would eliminate bottlenecks, boost operation and productivity of the MDAs.
He said that an efficient public finance structure would stimulate economic growth through government’s spending and improve participation and confidence of the private sector.
(NAN)