Emma Okonji
The federal government will on November 1, 2018, introduce a new Treasury Single Account (TSA) tariff regime, to ensure that the service charge of all payments made to government agencies will be borne by the payer.
Under the new tariff regime, the service charge on all payment to its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), would be borne by the payer.
This development was contained in a statement issued by the office of the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Ahmed Idris, which was the outcome of a stakeholders’ sensitisation forum on TSA, which held in Abuja on Tuesday.
“In line with the global best practices and amidst dwindling revenues, the federal government has approved a new Treasury Single Account tariff model which mandates that the service charge on payment to its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) from November 1, 2018 would be borne by the payer,” the statement said.
The revelation emerged at the recently concluded One-day Stakeholder Sensitisation Exercise on TSA e-Collection Charges held in Abuja on Tuesday, organised by the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation.
Under the new model, according to information emanating from the office the AGF, all funds collection into the TSA would require payers to bear the transaction cost.
The new model would therefore replace the previous one wherein the merchant— the federal government—bore the charges on all transactions to the service providers on behalf of payers.
In the previous tariff regime, the federal government owed the technology service providers and the participating deposit money banks up to two years arrears of service charge.
In 2012, the pilot TSA scheme commenced using a unified structure of accounting for the 217 MDAs for accountability and transparency in public fund management.
In August 2015, the initiative was fully implemented and covered over 1000 MDAs after a presidential directive.
At commencement, all players, including all commercial banks, System Specs and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), agreed that a fee of one per cent of funds collected is payable.
System Specs is the technology company that designed and is implementing the payment app called Remita, that is currently driving TSA in Nigeria.
The payment app is a single online platform that manages financial payments tags has blocked all financial leakages in the government circle.
