TSA implementation Susceptible To Abuse, Institute Warns

Registrar/chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Treasury Management (CITM), Olumide Adedoyin, has said there were no effective safeguards in the implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA).

To this end, Adedoyin urged the government to ensure continuous training and retraining of personnel handling the process as some that are saddled with these responsibilities do not understand it effectively.

Adedoyin said, He also asked the government to ensure the domestication of several laws governing procurement.

“Like every government policy, the TSA as it is a function of just an account. It is not an app, it is not a policy, it is just an account. What the TSA tries to do is to make sure that the government has its resources in place and can know what they have at any given time.

“Now the first step the government was supposed to take was to do what we call cash pulling. Call up your resources from every bank into one single account. Once you do so, those bank accounts you have should not be closed down, rather you try to moderate them into receiving banks.

They receive on your behalf but you cannot disburse from those banks, while at the end of the day you just have an online real-time balance to make sure that what comes in is being accounted for.

“That was supposed to be the function. But what we discovered at the end of the day was that there are some little processes and challenges within that platform because the back end of the audit was not adequately secured. So if you did not secure the back end, despite being able to make resources and bring those resources, then there is a little bit of opening in the back that could lead to haemorrhaging of resources and so on,” he said.

The registrar noted that his agency had reached out to the government on different fora, trying to make them understand that the importance of putting these back ends in check is quite important.

“Second, we want to believe too that there must be an orientation of the continuous training and retraining of individuals. You would be surprised that some that are saddled with these responsibilities do not understand the process effectively.