The Federal Ministry of Finance has reported that, through the consolidation efforts of the ‘Debt Analytics and Reporting Application,’ it has been able to aggregate debts totalling approximately N5.2 Trillion from data collected from over 5,000 debts owed to Ministries, Departments, and Agencies.
The disclosure was made by the Director of Special Projects in the Ministry, Mrs. Aisha Omar, during a sensitization workshop for stakeholders drawn from Ministries, Departments, and Agencies from the North East zone on the debt recovery drive.
According to her, the debt aggregation effort is still ongoing, and currently, an approximate sum of N57 billion has been recovered so far from the amount due to concerted efforts by stakeholders and the Federal Government.
She added that because of the situation, the Ministry has come up with a programme tagged ‘Project Lighthouse’ to help the Federal Government unravel debts and recover them from debtors.
Speaking at the workshop held in Gombe on Wednesday, Director of Special Projects in the Ministry, Mrs. Aisha Omar, said that one of the key economic policy objectives of the Ministry is improving the Federal Government’s revenue drive, especially from non-oil revenue sources.
Represented by the Deputy Director, Bridget Molokwu, she said that an important part of the policies and strategies is to leverage big data technology to help block revenue loopholes, identify new revenue opportunities, optimise existing revenue streams, especially non-oil revenue, and improve fiscal transparency.
According to her, “In actualising this goal, the Federal Ministry of Finance initiated ‘Project Lighthouse,’ which has enabled the aggregation of relevant economic and financial information from multiple agencies who hitherto did not share data.”
The Director added, “Generally, revenue loopholes have been aided by poor information sharing and enforcement.”
Aisha Omar added, “Data from Project Lighthouse revealed that many companies and individuals who owe government agencies have refused to honour their obligations but are still being paid, especially through government platforms such as the Government Integrated Financial Management System (GIFMIS) and Treasury Single Account (TSA), due to a lack of visibility over these transactions.”
Also speaking, Mr Abraham Atteh, Senior Management Consultant on the project, said that the public is only aware of the debt owed by the government, not the debt being owed to her.
According to him, “The emphasis over the years has been that the government is owing, but nobody is putting emphasis on who is owing the government.”
“The debt recovery initiative is to help block significant revenue loopholes in the government by ensuring that corporate entities doing business with the government but failing to fulfil the transaction and being paid on the government platform are made to honour their financial obligation,” he said.
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