The Nigerian Senate has concluded plans to mandate the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning to exclude about 60 federal agencies from getting allocation from the federal government budget, beginning from next year.
The agencies include; Federal Inland Revenue Service, Nigeria Customs Service, Security and Exchange Commission, National Broadcasting Commission and Oil and Gas Free Trade Zone Commission.
The senate Joint Committee on Finance and National Planning in had concluded plans to include the proposal in its report which would be submitted to the Senate at plenary on resumption on September 15.
The proposal was due to the conviction that the agencies generate enough revenue to fund their overheads and payment of salaries, and would therefore not need to be funded from the national budget.
“We want to put an end to indolence and wastage of revenue. Many of the agencies have more than enough to remain on their own but they are still being funded from the national budget. We are doing this in the interest of Nigerians because we are tired of passing budgets that are not implementable due to deficit”. a member of the committee was quoted by Punch as saying.
The joint committee on Tuesday concluded a five-day interactive session with the various Federal Government revenue generating agencies based on the 2021-2023 Medium Term Expenditure and Fiscal Strategy Paper.
The committee, in most of its engagements with the heads of the agencies, expressed disappointment with their poor revenue profile, huge wage bill and poor remittances to the Consolidated Revenue Fund account.
The Chairman of the joint committee, Senator Solomon Adeola, told the heads of the agencies after the session that many of them had no business receiving allocation from the federation account.
He said the Senate would work out an arrangement to amend the Fiscal Responsibility Act that would stop the agencies from spending the generated revenue as they pleased.
He said some of the agencies like the Oil and Gas Free Trade Zone Commission, had willingly pulled out of being funded from the federal budget, meaning they would no longer collect allocation for salaries and overhead from the federation account.
