Uche Usim, Abuja
A delegation from The Gambia Ministry of Finance and Economic Matters, the Central Bank of The Gambia and the country’s Accountant-General on Monday began a two-week strategic training in Abuja towards understudying the successful implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) in Nigeria.
Nigeria has become a global reference point for the successful implementation of the TSA programme, even as the government said it currently saves over ₦24.7 billion monthly while transaction value has hit N30 trillion.
Speaking at the event, the Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed said the visit was most welcome as both countries enjoy a very strong bond on various fronts.
She said: “TSA has helped us track government’s funds. The funds are pooled and help us balance our ways and means when we have recourse to it.
“I urge the Gambian delegation to take advantage of this visit. Take as much information as you possibly can”, she said.
She hinted that Nigeria was considering another option of capturing all accruals by foreign missions to into a single account as it was presently having challenges including them in the TSA arrangement.
“One of the challenges facing the full implementation of the TSA in Nigeria is how to bring in revenue generated by foreign missions usually in different currencies into the TSA.
“To address this challenge, the government is looking at different options to interface with TSA for foreign missions.
“With the introduction of TSA, balances in government account are regularly reconciled.
“So, I urge you all to take advantage of the two weeks study stay in Nigeria to visit some states in the country that have implemented a different variant of TSA from that of the federal government.
Also speaking at the meeting, the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF) who was represented by the Director, Funds, Mr. Mohammed Usman said The Gambians have a lot to learn from Nigeria’s public finance management initiatives.
“Not just TSA. We also have various reforms introduced into public accounting process like the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS), the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System
(GIFMIS) is an IT-based system for budget planning, the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) is an Information Communications Technology (ICT) project, among others.
In her remarks, Madam Ada Gaye, Permanent Secretary in the ministry of finance and national planning of The Gambia said they were in the country to learn from how Nigeria how it has managed its TSA as part of the public finance reforms taking place in the Gambia especially the monitoring of government funds.
“We’ve started implementing the TSA in The Gambia and we’ve good support from international bodies
EU funded the trip to Nigeria. We only have Nigeria as the only country to visit for further study TSA implementation,” she said.
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