The Accountant-General of the Federation, Mr. Ahmed Idris has noted that the quality of  leadership provided by President  Muhammadu Buhari, which he described as  rare courage and political will is a major reason for the successes so far achieved by the Treasury Single Account policy implementation.

The AGF made this disclosure  during his welcome Address at the opening of a two day retreat on the one year of the  TSA implementation ( the benefits, challenges and way forward) being organised by his office at the International Conference Centre Abuja from 14-15 February, 2017.

Highlighting the successes of the TSA , Mr. Idris revealed that the sum of N5.244 trillion has so far been realized as inflows in the TSA account following the moping -up and direct debits of Accounts by the Central bank of Nigeria.

Mr Idris further said that TSA has eliminated multiple banking arrangements in the MDAS and resulted in the consolidation of over 200,000 bank accounts which were spread in Deposit Money Banks across the country . TSA has equally  brought transparency , effective tracking of Government revenue as well as blocked leakages and abuse in management of Government finances

“TSA implementation  has taken us out of the era of indiscriminate borrowings by MDAS and saved Government charges associated borrowing which amounted to about N4.7 Billion prior to full Implementation of TSA “ the AGF said.

Furthermore, Ahmed Idris  revealed that given the considerable gains so far recorded in the TSA implementation, there was need to evaluate the programme and come up with best ways of improving the Policy, which is the reason for the retreat.

He gave assurance that government was considering going beyond the  Cash Management of TSA but will explore other viable economic options of resource utilization and deployment especially in this era of economic recession.

In a speech to declare open the Retreat, the  Ag. President Prof Yemi Osibanjo GCON, represented by the Special Adviser  on Economic Affairs , Dr. Adeyemi,  Dipelu, congratulated the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and its partners, particularly the IMF and the World Bank for their successful implementation of the TSA.

He underscored the importance of the TSA scheme as being instrumental to the efficient management of Public finances and pledged  Government’s commitment towards ensuring improvement in the implementation of the  Programme.

The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun in her speech  highlighted the benefits of the TSA saying that  it has enhanced greater opportunity  in exercising better control over the Financial base of MDAs and allows for critical decisions to be made.

Mrs. Adeosun,  explained that attempts are being made to expand the scheme by engaging statutory cooperations to come on board in order to  adopt the scheme but identified the major challenge as the uncooperative attitude of some Deposit Money Banks who are still keeping some government funds in their custody.

She however said that Government has been engaging them on the need to transfer funds without identity to the TSA and for the recalcitrant ones, government was making efforts to engage auditors to keep a tab on such funds.

There were presentations from MD Access Bank Mr Herbert Wigwe and Rep. Of the Gov of Anambra state and syndicate sessions which provided the platform for brainstorming on the way forward.