Creditors Owe FG ₦5.2 Trilion – Zainab Ahmed

The federal government is being owed a whooping sum of N5.2 trillion. The Minister of Finance, Budget and national Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, disclosed this at the launching of the Project Lighthouse Debt Analytics & Reporting Platform, in Abuja this morning.

She said that the discovery of the debt owed to the government was made following a 2019 Finance Circular directing all Ministries, Departments and Agencies , as well as, Federal Government Owned Enterprises (FGOEs) to provide the government’s credit portfolio in all such organizations.

Mrs. Ahmed revealed that the sum of N53.5 billion has been recovered in the last one and a half years.

According to her, “A perfunctory review of perceived significant leakages in Government led the FMFBNP to issue a directive on 26th September 2019, to all government agencies in a bid to aggregate all Government debts across all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), with a view to having a single window on the credit profile of Government.

“Sequel to the issuance of the Finance Circular, the Ministry through the consolidation efforts of the project, has been able to aggregate monumental debts of approximately N5.2 trillion.

“These debts came to the spotlight from data aggregated from over 5,000+ debtors across ten (10) Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). Working in collaboration with the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF), we have been able to recover the sum of N53.5 billion within the last 12-18 month, through the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) as a recovery touch point.