(ABUJA)
Acting Chairman, Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC), Mr Victor Muruako, said proposed scrapping of the commission had reduced the compliance level of relevant government agencies with its regulations.
Muruako made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja.
He said that revenue-generating Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) had become reluctant in remitting the mandatory 70 per cent of their operating surpluses to the Consolidated Revenue Fund being coordinated by the commission.
The White Paper on Mr Steve Oronsaye’s committee’s report on the Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies recommended FRC among agencies to be scrapped.
Muruako told NAN that the slow response of the revenue generating agencies in the remittance of the operating surpluses was borne out of their fear that the commission would soon be scrapped.
According to him, MDAs that used to pay their operating surplus are now nonchalant about doing so because they think that very soon the commission will cease to exist and they won’t have to pay.
“In fact, what MDAs collect as operating surplus for the Federal Government is going down because their officials think that we are going to be scrapped,” he said.
Muruako disclosed that only 15 states out of the 36 states in the federation had so far domesticated the FRC law.
He stressed the need for state governments to domesticate the law in order to ensure accountability and proper monitoring of public funds.
“Fifteen states have so far adopted the FRC act; only nine states have set up Fiscal Responsibility Commission, and the rest are still at different stages of adoption of the law.
“The bottleneck to adopting the law at state level is an institutional problem. There is also the problem of infrastructural challenge.
“The fact that these states will have to create a commission, employ competent staff and all that, is a challenge for some of them,” he said.
The chairman said that funding was another challenge militating against the adoption of the law in some states.
He, however, promised that the commission would encourage states to adopt the law to ensure good fiscal practice and prudent management of funds.
(NAN)

Revenue-generating MDAs not remitting mandatory operating surplus to FG