The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Nduka Chiejina Assistant Editor

NERFUND gets new Chief Executive

The federal government appointed Dr Ezekiel Oseni the Acting Managing Director of the National Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFUND).

A statement from the Ministry of finance on Wednesday said the Minister, Mrs Kemi Adeosun gave the approval under a Management Agreement between the ministry and the Bank of Industry (BoI). The appointment is with immediate effect.

The statement which was signed by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Dr Mahmoud Isa-Dutse said Dr. Ezekiel Oseni until his appointment was a General Manager and Chief Risk Officer at BoI.

With this appointment, Oseni has been mandated to “reposition NERFUND and ensure that all outstanding indebtedness are recovered.”

In June this year, Mrs. Adeosun directed all staff of the National Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFUND), to immediately return to their duty posts after intervening to resolve the crisis within the organisation.

Staff of the Agency had earlier been directed in a Circular signed by the Permanent Secretary, on June 15, 2016, to stay away from work to forestall further breakdown of law and order as a result of disputes between the Executive Management, Senior Management and other staff of the organisation.

NERFUND was established in 1989 to provide medium to long-term financing to viable Small and Medium scale production enterprises to increase the quantity of goods and services available for local consumption and export, provide needed employment, expand the nation’s production base and add value to the economy.

The Fund has so far extended credit facilities for 2, 829 projects valued N9.5 billion between 1989 and 1999.

August 24, 2016
FAAC shares N559.032bn for June
- FG Vows to Recover from Recession
Disbursements to the three tiers of government from the federation account appreciated significantly after many months of weak disbursements with the sum of N559.032 billion being shared among the federal, state and local governments for the month of June 2016.

This is the first time the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) is sharing such an amount which the state governments said will allow them to pay salaries and meet other financial obligations.

An elated minister of finance Mrs Kemi Adeosun told journalists at the end of the monthly FAAC meeting in Abuja yesterday that the appreciation in the amount shared for June 2016 came Inspite of the country technically entering recession.

A breakdown of the disbursements showed that from statutory allocation, the federal government received N199.754 billion, state governments N101.318 billion, local governments N78.112 billion and N17.124 billion was given to the oil producing states as 13% mineral revenue derivation.

For Value Added Tax (VAT) the federal government received N9.706 billion, states N32.353 billion and local governments N22.647 billion.

Adeosun attributed the increase in what was shared for June to improved collection performance by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS).

The improved performance from the non-oil revenue generating agencies, the minister said “shows that some of the reforms in revenue collection is improving significantly.”

Speaking on the state of the economy, Adeosun reiterated her earlier remarks to the senate that country was technically into recession but assured Nigerians that there was no cause to panic as “the fundamentals remain strong and if we can be disciplined on what we spend money on. If we stick to the reforms, things will improve.”

With regards to the country entering into recession, the finance minister assured the country that “we are going to recover, it is painful but we will come out better.”

Adeosun also disclosed that N247.9 billion has so far been disbursed from the 2016 budget with an additional N60 billion to be disbursed this week. So far in the last two months, N74 billion has been given to the federal ministry of Works, N22.1 billion to transport ministry and N21.9 billion to the ministry of agriculture.

The finance minister disclosed that the government was looking for money to fund the next batch of releases.

On another happy note the finance minister announced that N3.094 billion is now left in the Excess Crude Account the minister an appreciation from the over $2 billion in the account in the past.
July 22, 2016
FG orders audit of military payroll

Following revelations in the course of the trial of the former Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, at the Federal High Court, Abuja, that the sum of N558.2 million was allegedly diverted monthly from the Nigeria Air Force account into private pockets, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, has directed an investigation into the payrolls of the Air Force, the Navy and the Army by the Continuous Audit Team of the Federal Government.

A statement from the ministry signed by Salisu Na’Inna Dambatta, Director (Information) of the ministry said “the Continuous Audit team has been charged with the responsibility of scrutinizing the payrolls of the three services, which have not yet been put on the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information [1] System (IPPIS), to ensure that all possible loopholes that could lead to leakages were blocked.”

According to him, the exercise “will be conducted, pending the biometric capturing and migrating the payroll of the three services to the IPPIS, in line with the policy of the Federal Government to clean up the payroll of all public sector employees.”

The Minister of Finance said that the measure has become necessary as part of the change mantra of the Administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, which include the restoration of the culture of transparency, accountability and control in the management of public funds.

The Continuous Audit Process was one of the initiatives of the Minister approved by President Muhammadu Buhari as part of the on-going reforms in the public finance management system of the federal government, which he emphasised in his 2016 Budget speech.

Mrs. Kemi Adeosun said the Director of Special Projects in the Ministry of Finance, Mr. Mohammed Kyari Dikwa, will head the Continuous Audit Team and report their findings for appropriate action by the Federal Government.

May 12, 2016
Revenue leakages: FG to review its tax incentive policies

The federal government plans to review its existing tax incentive policies further block revenue leakages.

Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed made this disclosure on Monday at the sideline of the conference of African Ministers of Finance and Economic Planning in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Ahmed said that with the current decline in oil revenue, the government had “begun strengthening our tax revenue collection agencies and processes. We are also expanding our tax base by trying to bring as many people and organisations that are in the informal sector not paying tax into the tax net.”

She then added by that “we are also pulling back some of the waivers that we feel are absolutely unnecessary and are rather slowing down the economy and are simply a drain on our resources. We are also trying to bring in revenue that was not properly harnessed from the government owned entreprises who were before now, making money and spending it with little or no returns to the government.”

Ahmed said the Buhari administration plans to continue to finance its subsequent budgets through non-oil sector revenue which was why it was very serious about blocking all leakages concerning tax.

Also speaking at the event, Mr Tunde Aremu, the Head of Policy Advocacy and Campaign Manager, Actionaid Nigeria said if the government was looking at reviewing its tax policies, it should focus on tax concessions handed out to multinationals.

He reiterated that “what Nigeria is losing through the granting of tax incentives is an average of 2.9 billion dollars every year. That is huge and unnecessary. We think it’s absurd that a country with a large population like Nigeria with purchasing power still thinks it needs to give tax incentives to attract investors.”

Aremu cautioned that “Nigeria needs to look at its tax policies in terms of the types of provisions it has that gives concessions to multinationals and other laws guiding the granting of incentives in Nigeria. We’ve discovered that there are several agencies that play the role of granting incentives. This means we have several locations where treaties are being negotiated and signed.”

Aremu said Nigeria needs to also revise its existing tax treaties signed with countries. He said some of these treaties have become an avenue for huge corporate bodies to evade paying taxes.

April 4, 2016