The Acting Chairman of Nigeria’s Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC), Mr Victor Muruako, says more than N650 billion has so far been remitted as operating surplus into the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) in the last two years. Muruako said it was part of the FRC’s mandate to ensure that scheduled corporations under the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) 2007, remit 80 percent of its operating surplus into the CRF.
According to him, through the commission’s intervention, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has complied with the FRA, and has within the first quarter of 2018 remitted about N49.7 billion to the CRF.
He explained that under the present administration, there had been a lot of improvement in payment of operating surpluses, adding that more corporations were added to the schedule in 2016.
“Part of what we have done is to recommend the increase of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), under our schedule. Before they were 31 but since Dec. 2016, the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, approved the inclusion of 91 organisations, bringing the total number to 122. We are engaging those 122 agencies and there has been a lot of improvement in the independent revenue of the Federal Government,’’ he said.
The Chairman also said that in ensuring accountability in Federal Government’s capital projects, it undertook verification of selected Federal Government capital projects in 2017.
“We have been able to bring to the fore some of the challenges some of the projects have and some have not been completed. We did our report based on what we saw on the field and as a working document, it would go a long way in ensuring that the mistakes of the past are avoided. This is also to support the President’s drive for citizens to get value for their money, by ensuring proper project monitoring, accountability and judicious use of funds released,’’ the Chairman added.
Muruako also said that part of the Commission’s mandate was to ensure a uniform standard of calculating operating surpluses to ensure those discrepancies between agencies’ annual accounts were resolved.
It would be recalled that the Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) was established by to provide for prudent management of the nation’s resources.
