The federal government collected the sum of N7 trillion through the Treasury Single Account between January and November, this year.
The Minister of Finance, Budget and national Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, disclosed this while inaugurating TSA Supervisory Board and Inter-Ministerial TSA Implementation Committee, in Abuja, yesterday.
Her words, “Aggregate collection of N7 trillion was made from 22 million transactions between January and November, 2021while N19 trillion worth of payments were processed from 20 million transactions within the same period.
“This goes to show the enormous volume of transactions processed on the TSA platform and the need to leverage on the onboarding of additional PSSPs to reduce the cost of collection which is currently N150 per transaction.
“Government is of the opinion that there is sufficient room for reduction in cost of collection to no more than N50 per transaction. I strongly believe that given the volume of transactions, N50 per transaction is fair consideration for collection services.”
The minister disclosed that more Payment System Service Providers (PSSP) would be brought into the TSA.
At the onset, she said: “Participation of more than one Payment System Service Provider (PSSP) was however a challenge at the time. The Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) which was the first TSA management application was designed to interface with T-24, the CBN core banking application through a single payment gateway.
“The original intention was to use the Real Time Gross Settlement system (RTGS) to be provided by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Unable to provide the service at the time, CBN opted for SystemSpecs/Remita after a rigorous competitive procurement process.
“That initial constraint ultimately paved the way for Remita to become the dominant TSA PSSP. Notwithstanding the obvious constraint, we insisted that other service providers should be accommodated in the TSA collection process provided they are integrated with Remita. The reason is that without such integration, it would be difficult to keep track of transactions in diverse, stand-alone collection applications.
“This singular act, innocuous at the time and borne out of our desire to do the right thing has unfortunately been misunderstood, generated too much controversy and become a source of needless distraction for everyone.”
Consequently, she said, “Through the work of the Committees being inaugurated today, we expect to finally open the TSA to multiple service providers to put an end to the agitations and discontent of the past.”
Mrs. Ahmed described TSA as the most effective platform in the transaction of government businesses, she said.
Her words, “Of all our reforms, TSA is arguably the most popular both locally and internationally. As a public trust, Nigerians of all works of life monitor its progress and voluntarily report observed non-compliance to appropriate quarters.
“Our TSA experience has been a pleasant one. The centralization of our banking arrangement has made it easier to determine government cash balances, reduce cost of borrowing, enhance liquidity, block leakages and improve internally generated revenue performance.
Using the TSA platform, we have since automated direct deduction of operating surplus of eligible agencies. At the last count, 16 agencies are covered and more will be added in the coming months.
