Gombe Bags 4 World Bank/SFTAS Awards On Fiscal Transparency

Gombe state has won the World Bank’s states’ fiscal transparency, accountability, and sustainability (SFTAS) award in four key categories.

The global bank said the North East state bagged the award following reforms that have impacted positively on its fiscal transparency and accountability in public resource management.

SFTAS is a programme that encourages and motivates Nigerian states towards improvement of their PFM systems, processes and institution aimed at strengthening fiscal transparency to help build trust in government, facilitate accountability in public resource management and ensuring sustainability in the participating states.

The state received the award during an event  tagged, “Federal Government of Nigeria/World Bank States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) recognition dinner with Governors/Awards Night”, organised to celebrate the acievements of SFTAS since inception at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja on Monday, 14th November,  2022.

At the occasion, Gombe state received awards of excellent performance on fiscal transparency and accountability, very good performances on efficiency of public expenditure,  domestic revenue mobilisation and  on overall SFTAS  disbursement linked indicators (DLI’s).

Gombe is also ranked 5th in the overall rankings for SFTAS.

The state commissioner for Finance and Economic Development,  Muhammad Gambo Magaji, who received the awards on behalf of Governor Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya attributed the feat attained by Gombe State to the political will and determination of the governor to reform and reposition the state’s public finance management structure to compare with international best practices.

He said the governor provided support and the freedom for the steering committee to implement policies and procedures that ensured the state met all requirements attached to the Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLI’s) under the SFTAS programme without interference.

The Finance commissioner noted that Governor Inuwa has enthroned a durable system that instills probity, transparency accountability, due process and the rule of law in governance.

Recall that just recently, Gombe state moved four places, from 11th position in 2021 to 7th in 2022, in the Transparency and Integrity Index released earlier this month by the Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Integrity Watch (CeFTIW).

Also,  the 2021 state-of-the-states report published by BudgIT, a leading fiscal policy tracking organisation in Nigeria, indicated that Gombe state recorded impressive improvements in its revenue generation capacity as well as expenditure efficiency under the leadership of Governor Inuwa Yahaya.