April 11, (THEWILL) – The Federal Government has uncovered a staggering debt of about N5.2 trillion owed from over 5,000 debtors across 10 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
Out of the amount, the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF), working in concert with other agencies of government, have been able to recover the sum of N53.5 billion in the last 12-18 months, through the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS).
This was disclosed by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning (MFBNPF), Mrs Zainab Ahmed, at the formal launch of the “Project Lighthouse Debt Analytics and Reporting Platform in Abuja on Monday.
Project Lighthouse is an initiative, which entails using advanced data mining and analytics techniques to identify tax defaulters, establish their tax liabilities and send notifications to appropriate authorities for necessary action.
According to the Minister, the debts came to the spotlight from data aggregated from over 5,000+ debtors across 10 MDAs.
She said: “Working in collaboration with the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF), we have been able to recover the sum of N53.5 billion within the last 12-18 months, through the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) as a recovery touch point.
“However, to consolidate on the current effort of this project, a Debt Recovery Application has been built to be monitored by the new Debt Recovery Unit.
“The Debt Recovery Unit will capitalise on the effort made by the project consultants to provide the government with up-to-date records into its credit status by harmonising debt records across all MDAs within the country, give debtors access to a platform to view and offset debt in a seamless and secured manner as well as strengthen the institutional framework for enforcement and management of the Federal Debt Recovery plan.”
Ahmed tasked all Federal Government-Owned Enterprises (FGOEs) and MDAs to update their list of debtors on a month-on-month basis against the Project Lighthouse debt recovery portfolio. This also encompasses the development of an institutional framework for enforcement, recovery and management of the fiscal environment.
The Minister added that one of the key economic policy objectives of the current administration, as contained in the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), was improving overall Federal Government revenues by targeting and increasing revenues from non-oil revenue sources. “ERGP also aims, among other goals, to increase the tax base by drastically increasing the Company Income Tax and Value Added Tax compliance, bringing additional taxpayers into the tax net, and increase Tax to GDP ratio.
“You will recall that in the last few months, major steps have been taken to improve the fiscal position of Government. One of such steps is the implementation of quite a number of portfolio initiatives under the Strategic Revenue Growth Initiatives (SRGI), which some of you have been participating in”, she added.
The Minister regretted that despite being in a technology and data-centric world, Nigeria has not had a culture of using data and information to guide the formulation, implementation and impact assessment of our initiatives and policies or even in carrying out mandates as a Ministry.
“This modus operandi presents a number of challenges. First, our policies are not usually empirically based. Second, we are not able to effectively track the implementation and impact of these policies, initiatives, programmes and mandate. Third, we lack data to help guide the revision or optimisation of these policies.
“In response to the aforementioned challenges, the Federal Ministry of Finance initiated “Project Lighthouse.
“In July 2017 during the first Phase of Project Lighthouse, data was mined from multiple sources to support the implementation of the Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS).
“The data included tax records from tax authorities, company ownership and directors from Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), land records from land registries, Company directors’ information from NAICOM, AMCON, Non-structured data from online sources, Contractor payment records from GIFMIS, Remita, etc. All these data helped us to identify and better profile individual and corporate taxpayers. It also helped to identify tax defaulters and potential beneficiaries of VAIDS. This exercise raised awareness about VAIDS, it increased the level of responses we got, helped us to know more about taxpayers, their assets and income sources that were hitherto unknown to government and tax authorities.
“A perfunctory review of perceived significant leakages in Government led the FMFBNP to issue a directive on 26th September 2019, to all government agencies in a bid to aggregate all government debts across all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), with a view to having a single window on the credit profile of government”, she stated.
