The Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), DrDasukiArabi, has said that the Federal Government has been able to save N10 trillion with the implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) under President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. Arabi made this disclosureyesterday whileresponding to questions at a media conference organised by the Presidential Communication Team at the Presidential Villa. Speakingonthesuccesses recorded by his agency in the implementation of government reform efforts, Arabi added that the introduction of the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) has led to the reduction of the Federal Civil Service personnel to 720,000. According to him, the IPPIS led to the weeding out of about 70,000 ghost workers from the service.
“We have a one-shot opportunitytolookatIPPISand say, asattoday, wehave720,000 public servants working for Nigeria. We’ve been able to reduce more than N220 billion wastage through wrong management of IPPIS on payroll by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of government. We have reduced the budget deficits and change the budget composition.
“We have succeeded in getting the Treasury Single Account deployed in all ministries, departments and agencies of government. Challenges have come in that implementation at the initial stage, but we are overcoming that and government is able to save over N10 trillion over the years, because whatever you’re generating now goes into a Treasury Single Account that is managed by somebody else, not you. “And government, especially at the top, is always abletoseewhathascomeinto ourTreasurySingleAccount today and what has gone out of that. So planning has been simplified. Budgeting has been simplified.
Our distribution and allocationof resourceshavebeen simplified and streamlined,” he said. The Director-General noted that as part of the reforms in the service, the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) has made government business paperless and had reduced man-toman contact in processing and payments in MDAs of government. He said with this policy, internationalratingagencies now have confidence in the country, because they have access to information and data that they were not able to get before this time. Responding to questions of irregular deductions blamed on the IPPIS which was part of the cause of friction between government andpublicuniversityunions, Arabi said: “For every deduction that is done, there is justification for that. And if there are problems, they are identified and complaints made that will be rectified. And for ourcolleagueswhomayhave taken lot of loans, deductions are being made left, right and center.” On the delay in the implementation of the Steve Oronsaye report, Irabi said some parts of the recommendationshavebeenimplemented.
