The Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Finance, Rep. James Faleke (APC-Lagos), says the house is putting trackers in place to monitor revenue generation and remittances by Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) in real-time.
Faleke made this known while reacting to the presentation of the 2021 budget to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday in Abuja.
He said that the Committee on Finance had made efforts so that more revenue would come into the coffers of government.
The chairman said that there was a need to ensure appropriate remittances of revenue to enable government to fund the 2021 budget.
Faleke said that fiscal deficit in the budget was because of low revenue and that the COVID-19 pandemic affected Nigeria negatively.
According to him, even Mr President did say that the greatest problem we have is revenue generation.
“For us, the National Assembly, at least this 9th Assembly, we are trying our best, and I am saying that in the next phase we are already talking to an ICT company that can give us online monitoring.’’
He said that the monitoring would ensure that “whereby when you make the money, as you making the money, we are seeing it online rather than doing a post-mortem approach.”
Faleke said that his committee had an approval to carry out a review of all agencies in the country.
According to him, this is to determine which ones are supposed to go out of budget and which ones can sustain themselves.
“What we have seen, mainly during our review, is that most agencies spend their Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) rather than remit it to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF).
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“We strongly believe that is not good for us and we cannot allow that to continue.
“So, definitely when you have shortfall in revenue, you need to borrow money to augment your budget,” he said.
Faleke said that Buhari’s decision to ensure all ongoing projects were concluded before the commencement of new ones was the way to go.
According to him, whether you like it or not, it is all taxpayers’ money and the essence of those projects initially is to improve the economy of the country.
