Committee recovers hidden N0.7 billion from 3 agencies

An additional N793 million unremitted operating surpluses have been recovered by the federal government from three revenue generating agencies accused of short changing the government.

This amount was announced in a statement on Wednesday in Abuja by the Director of Information, Federal Ministry of Finance, Salisu Dambatta.

According to the statement, the Recovery Committee set up two weeks ago by the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, made this happen

The Committee was tasked to recover unremitted N450 billion operating surpluses from Federal revenue-generating Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

The surpluses are legally classified as a Federal Treasury Revenue.

The committee issued demand notices to 17 of the initial 33 affected Agencies, out of which it met with 10.

They included the National Shippers Council, Nigeria Export Promotion Council, National Health Insurance Scheme, Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority and the Nigeria Communication Commission.

The rest are Nigeria Postal Service, National Pension Commission, Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading Company, Raw Materials Research and Development Council and the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria.

According to the statement, the recoveries, totaling N793 million, were made from the Raw Materials
Research and Development Council (RMRDC), N278 million; Nigeria Shippers Council, N407 million and Nigeria Export Promotion Council, N108 million.

“So far, the cumulative total amount recovered is N1.44 billion, given the earlier recovery of N650 million from the Nigeria Shippers Council.

“Several other agencies were in the process of submitting repayment plan for approval.

Meanwhile, four agencies that were unable to make it to the meeting due to short notice have been rescheduled to appear before the Recovery Committee.

“They are the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), National Pensions Commission (PENCOM), Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA),” it stated.

Adeosun announced recently that many revenue generating Federal Government agencies have not remitted the operating surpluses from the revenues they generated totaling N450 billion from 2010 to date.

The agencies are required to pay the operating surpluses to the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federal Government not later than one month following the statutory deadline for publishing each corporation’s account as provided in the Fiscal Responsibility Commission Act 2007.