The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has said that the introduction of electronic collection of revenue called e-Collection by the federal government will help to curb revenue related corrupt practices in the country.
The apex bank, which also reckons that the new e-collection regime will expand the frontiers of the cashless policy in Nigeria revealed this at a workshop organised by SystemSpecs Limited, an indigenous software development company and owners of the Remita electronic payment platform.
Mr. Dipo Fatokun, Director, Banking and Payment System Department, CBN, who said this at the sensitisation workshop organised for banks of Federal Government e- Collection on CBN Payment Gateway noted that, “the whole world is moving into a cash-less mode and Nigeria cannot be an exemption. The e-Collection will avert a larger proportion of revenue theft, diversion of collected revenue and all sorts of corrupt practices associated with revenue collection.”
[su_quote]The e-Collection of revenue is part of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) initiative, under which all monies belonging to the government are domicile in one account with the Central Bank of Nigeria, with payments out and collection into the account is done via an electronic payment platform.[/su_quote]
Godwin Emefiele, CBN Governor (left) and President Goodluck Jonathan
According to him, “we must not be deterred by these routine challenges of infrastructural deficiencies or fraud (especially electronic/card fraud) that come up, because ultimately the potential benefits of going cashless outweigh the challenges.”
The CBN Director also explained that, “the policy involves a culture change, which will naturally take some time to gain acceptance. Nevertheless, with support of all the stakeholders, cash-less Policy is being accomplished.”
The e-Collection of revenue is part of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) initiative, under which all monies belonging to the government are domicile in one account with the Central Bank of Nigeria, with payments out and collection into the account is done via an electronic payment platform.
“E-Collection is the flip side of e-payment Outflows from the TSA are currently made through e-payment, while inflows are largely manual,” said Mr Jarad Sosarumso, Deputy Director, Revenue and Investment, Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OGF).
“E-collection completes the cycle of processing government transactions electronically”, said Sosarumso, who represented the Accountant General of the Federation, while noting that the present system of manual collection of revenue is fraught with problems including.
According to the AGF, some of the problems include “poor tracking of internally generated revenue ( IGR) and other collection; Leakages of government revenue and other inflows; Non remittance of revenue by collecting entities; Misappropriation of revenue and other collections; and Inadequate, or sometimes, out-right lack of records.”
He said the new e-Collection is designed to plug loopholes in the FGN revenue collection system; introduce a new regime of transparent and accountable IGR management and also to improve available funds for funding developmental programmes.”
The introduction of e-Collection aligns with the on-going CBN e-payment policy will also ease the burden of revenue payers; Make government contracts more accessible to the people and create a mutually rewarding relationship with collecting banks.”
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