The House of Representatives is to investigate an alleged loss of over $30 billion annually as a result of revenue leakages arising from tax evasion, malpractices, mis-use and diversion of foreign exchange allocations by companies and other entities.

The House at it’s plenary adopted a motion to investigate the disbursement of foreign exchange by the Central Bank of Nigeria and other agencies with a view to determining the exact amount that may have been lost by the government in the process.

The motion sponsored by James Faleke centered on an urgent need to rescue the country from over $30 billion annual revenue leakages.

The leakages, he said, arose from various malpractices in foreign exchange allocation to companies from sources such as CBN, autonomous, interbank, domiciliary and over the counter purchases for importation of physical goods, payments of foreign service vendors, dividend repatriation, foreign loans and interest payment including foreign currency denominated contracts payment by companies in engineering, procurement, construction, installation and marine transportations.

The investigation is also to determine in a statutory and in a professional manner, the revenue amount involved in the malpractices by each organization based on every revenue line item collectible by agency of Government for the purpose of timely recovery into Government accounts.

In related development, the House also expressed concern that the privatisation policy of the Federal Government was creating more job losses in the country than the ones it is creating.

Chairman of the House Committee on Public Accounts, Oluwole Oke, who made the observation, said it was a national calamity that 4000 workers lost their jobs due to the privatisation of Nigerdock company in 2001.

Nigerdock was sold to GEC Shipyard and Marine Contractors Ltd, a private marine company during the heat of the privatisation exercise.

Oke, who spoke at an investigative hearing on failure to submit audited accounts of partially and fully funded government agencies to the office of the Auditor General of the Federation, said the loss of 4000 workers of the company to privatisation is a huge loss to the country.

House Committee on Finance reminded the House of the fact that the crude oil price bench mark in 2020 Appropriation Act was put at $57 dollar per barrel while the price of crude oil in the international market has dropped to 47 dollars per barrel.

He said the implications of this was that the major source of revenue to fund the 2020 Appropriation Act is already in the negative. (The Nation)

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