The Federal Government Wednesday said
its financial policies have resulted in saving of over N500 billion
which would have been looted from Ministries Departments and Agencies
(MDAs).
Permanent Secretary, Special Duties, Federal Ministry of
Finance, Dr. Mohammed Dikwa, said the government was able to make this
huge savings by plugging leakages and wastages in government.
He
said: “If the initiative was not in place, this amount of money we are
talking about would have been spent by MDAs. It was because of this
initiative that was put in place that we were able to save that money
from treasury looters. “When we came up with the policy, an average of
11,000 tips were received on a monthly basis, but now, we hardly receive
20 to 30 tips simply because people have reduced wrong doing in
government.”
Dr. Dikwa spoke when he received in audience in his
office, the Alumni of National Institute for Policy and Strategic
Studies (NIPSS), Abuja Chapter.
He told the visitors that most of
the achievements were recorded under his leadership at the Presidential
Initiative for Continuous Audit (PICA), which he attributed to the
experience he got from NIPSS.
He said: “Over the last four years,
this administration has put in place a lot of policies on ground
especially the financial policies put in place at the Ministry of
Finance. There are tangible results we got over the years. One of the
fundamental achievements was saving by the government of over
N500billion from leakages and wastages under PICA.
“The primary
focus of PICA is to put systems and frameworks in place over finance and
spending of government revenue. The goal is to maximize the utilisation
of the resources through continuous assurance, so as to ensure that
requirements for improved efficiency, effectiveness and accountability
are met.
“PICA has also put in place many measures such as the
Whistle-blowing Policy. We were able to make not only recoveries, but
stopped people from doing the wrong things as far as the government
circle was concerned.”
According to him, in the past, when funds
are released to MDAs for specific purposes, the funds were usually
diverted into other things arbitrarily. “The external auditors will not
know, so we came in between the external and internal audit to ensure
that the money that is being released into MDAs are spent for that
purpose, and we held all the Account Officers accountable for every kobo
released to them,” he said.
He said the Federal Government
recovered over N144.89 billion in March last year from corrupt officials
through the implementation of the Whistle-blowing Policy.
Dr.
Dikwa said: “Another initiative was the Fiscal Sustainability Plan. A
plan that was extended to states and local governments because there was
this cry from the states and local governments that all our policies
were concentrated at the federal level and not being extended to states
and local governments, so we came up with Fiscal Sustainability Plan.
“We
gave 22 conditions to the states and local governments as an incentive
for them to get a kind of support from the Federal Government, provided
they follow these 22 conditions. One of these conditions was to ensure
that they publish every expenditure they had through their websites and
other publications; their allocations, what comes to the states monthly
and budget process.”
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