The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says the Federal Government’s Treasury Single Account (TSA) implementation was affecting its ways of generating income through investment of savings to fund budget deficits.

The commission made the assertion in a statement on its website entitled ‘the Nexus between SEC and TSA.’

According to the statement, TSA is an initiative of the Federal Government being implemented through the office of the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) as part of its Economic Reform Programme.

The statement also said it was a unified structure of Government Bank Accounts – a single account or a set of linked accounts for all government transactions.

It said that like many other initiatives, TSA came with the usual teething problems which included adjusting to the new ways and getting the procedures right.

“Another notable challenge was inability of the commission to directly invest its savings as was the practice to generate interest income to fund budget deficits.

“TSA will not only help government to unify banking arrangement but will give government oversight on cash resources, promote efficiency, transparency, accountability, reduce overall cost of government borrowing.”

It added that it would reduce idle cash balances of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) funds in banks.

“The SEC is supervised by the Federal Ministry of Finance and as an agency of the Federal Government it is bound to comply with all directives.

“The TSA is one of such directives, hence the nexus between SEC and TSA.”

It explained that the commission was one of the first agencies to comply, adding that experience so far had proven that TSA was indeed a more convenient payment platform.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mr Mounir Gwarzo, SEC Director-General, recently expressed concern that TSA operation had greatly reduced the capital market regulator’s ability to be flexible.

Gwarzo had said that the commission was currently “running a very tight budget, given that the market has gone down and given that there are aspirations to move the market up, we have to set aside some amount of money.

“The budget of 2015, we had a projection of N6.9 billion as our income but we were only able to make N4.9 billion because of the state of the market.

“We no longer take our staff on overseas and local training and our earning are now 30 to 40 per cent less than we had in the past.” (NAN)

•Photo shows Mounir Gwarzo.

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