Fed Govt to review Treasury forms

From Nduka Chiejina, (Asst Editor)

The Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF) has commenced a comprehensive review of treasury forms and other accounting source documents in use in all Federal Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs).

The review is to issue officially approved forms bearing treasury numbers for use in all MDAs to ensure uniformity.

A statement from the OAGF signed by Director (Information, Press and Public Relations), Henshaw Ogubike, said the Accountant-General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris has inaugurated an inter-ministerial committee to handle the review of the documents.

Ahmed said the committee was expected to “identify all treasury forms and accounting source documents presently in use; come up with new formats in line with the public financial reforms; recommend additions or deletions of the contents; assign relevant number systems to the treasury forms and review the documents in line with GIFMIS operations”.

He stressed that “in carrying out the assignment, the committee should be guided by the Federal Governments quest for adoption of e-governance at all levels and the fact that all the public finance reforms initiatives being driven by the Treasury are predicated on full deployment of ICT solutions”.

On the rationale for the review of the documents, Ahmed noted that the contents of the treasury forms and other accounting source documents in use were no longer relevant and useful to drive the various public finance management reforms of the Federal Government, which are mostly ICT-driven.

He explained that a comprehensive review and update of these accounting source documents become imperative for an efficient and successful implementation of government’s financial management reforms.

He reiterated the government’s resolve to ensure a successful review of the documents and charged the committee to give the assignment all amount of seriousness it deserves and deliver on time.

A source explained to The Nation that, some of the forms that will be reviewed include “the T5, T15 and other treasury forms and documents for different accounting procedures most of which are no longer feasible under the present reality”.

The source noted that “there are sub-treasury forms in the past when people carry cash but now they transfer money in line with current ICT payment. The new treasury forms to be introduced will minimize the use of manual payments and other treasury transactions; it will also do away with looking for who has physical hold of the manual forms”.