By Chioma Iruke
Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, has disclosed that the Federal Government is working on plans to sanction Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) if they fail to meet their revenue targets.
According to the Minister, this is an attempt to boost the revenue performance and remittance of government-owned enterprises.
She said, “We are working to ensure that MDAs appropriately account for and remit their internally generated revenues.
“GOEs’ revenue performance / remittance will be enhanced through effective implementation of the enhanced performance management framework, including possible sanctions should they default on their targets; tighter expenditure control including enforcing of Finance Act 2020 provision limiting GOEs cost-to-revenue ratio to maximum of 50 per cent ; and regular independent monitoring and reporting of revenue and expenditure performance of GOEs by both the Budget Office of the Federation and the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation.”
She buttressed that the agencies were limited to spending not more than 50 per cent of what they generated.
“These agencies cannot spend more than 50 per cent of what they generate. And this is one major revenue that would be coming into the government’s treasury,” she added.
She further stated that there is a robust monitoring mechanism in place, which would help in assessing the performance of agencies, adding that the new plan to sanction them for revenue target failure would be included in the Finance Act 2021 or as a directive from the President.
