The Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) on Sunday in Abuja, bemoaned the delay in submission of budget monitoring reports by the Budget Office of the Federal Ministry of Finance.
The Commissioner, Policy and Standards at the FRC, Dr. Sylvester Mordi, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the delays made it impossible to monitor budget performance.
He said the delays also made it impossible to correct mistakes.
“The first quarter report is supposed to come in 30 days after the end of the quarter which is April, the second one July, third one September/October, the final one January the following year.
“Based on our experience, empirical evidence, these reports are submitted on the average, three months behind time so we reported that this is not good for monitoring purposes.
“The purpose of the report is to tell the people see how far we have fared; we are going into the next stage so that we can nudge the implementers to ensure that the budget is achieved.
“But if the budget comes after the subsequent quarter is finished, the report dies before it reaches Fiscal Responsibility Commission.
“It’s not an accusation, it is a comment, it is an advice.’’
Mordi told NAN that the FRC was not in the habit of making accusations, but would make observations since the submission of budget reports was a provision of the Act establishing the commission.
He said that a provision of the Act demanded that the Executive, through the Minister of Finance, particularly through the Budget Office should prepare quarterly reports on budget implementation, evaluating financial targets and submit these reports to the Joint Committee of the National Assembly and the Fiscal Responsibility Commission.
He also expressed the commission’s displeasure with the NNPC over its non-submission of audited accounts.
He said that it was unimaginable that the NNPC which operated in a lucrative sector could claim to be making losses and as such was not returning its operating surpluses.
“NNPC is still on the hook both with the commission and the National Assembly; you see, NNPC makes losses from year to year, that’s what they claim.
“Oil and Gas, they are gold, so why should they be making losses; sale of oil is a different thing from this concept of operating surplus.
“NNPC has a budget for paying for its own operation and we are saying that after paying for their operation, they should save money and from that money they should pay 80 per cent as operating surplus.
“We asked NNPC, give us your audited account, to date we have not sighted one; we say give us your audited account and domestic report, but the finance director said he does not know the meaning of domestic report.’’
Mordi explained that domestic report was a report given by an external auditor telling you to keep clean your house and so many bad things that shouldn’t be brought to the public.
He said that according to the FRC Act, all MDAs should pay 80 per cent of their net profit as operating surplus and retain 20 per cent for use.
“It’s not arbitrary; then when you look at them they say they are not making profit and so on, but you look at the accounts, you see over-invoicing, over-pricing.
“They can say this year they paid N10 million for newspapers and next year N20 million, the following year will be N30 million, but they are reading the same newspaper.
“All done to cheat revenue. But we say no! Then they resort to all sorts of creative accounting to reduce what should go to government. It’s is not only NNPC.’’
The Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mr Andrew Yakubu, had recently claimed that operational losses and harsh operating environment had made it difficult for the corporation to declare any surplus over the years.
He listed challenges contributing to the operational losses to include pipeline vandalism, oil theft and the fact that the NNPC bought crude at international rate and sold products at regulated prices.
“We should like to emphasise that strictly speaking NNPC cannot be expected to sweep funds into the Consolidated Revenue Fund since the law specifically says it is surplus that should be so paid.
“ In a situation where due to no fault of ours, we operate at a loss, there would not be any surplus to pay. Of course, we are all living witnesses to the causes of our operational losses,’’ he had said.
