FG expects N886b from MDAs as independent revenue annually, says FRC chairman

The Acting Chairman, Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC),Victor Muruako, has said that the Federal Government was expecting to get N886 billion from MDAs as Independent Revenue per annum.
He said this, on Tuesday, in Abuja, at a stakeholders’ dialogue session with the management of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) led by its Director General, Mansur Liman.
Muruako said that if the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) adhered to the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), they would be able to make the remittances easily.
He said that the Federal Government would, in turn, not have to borrow for overhead, but for capital projects only.
“He specifically said that as at October 2017, the independent revenue of the Federal Government had failed to reach up to the 25 per cent target.”
Muruako said that the dialogue was aimed at intimating the head of FRCN of the Federal Government’s expectation of it, having just been added to the FRA schedule to remit 80 per cent of its operating surplus to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF.)
“We believe that having introduced ourselves and engaging you in correspondence, we should engage you in discussions and dialogue so that you can appreciate what we do.”
Responding, Liman commended the effort of FRC to ensure that all MDAs comply with the FRA.
He said it would help the agencies ensure that they took care of their responsibilities.
He, however, said that the FRCN was undergoing various challenges that needed to be solved monetarily but had not because of paucity of funds.
FRC has scheduled to have dialogue sessions with 18 MDAs in the next two weeks.
A circular on the inclusion of 92 additional corporations, agencies and government owned companies to the schedule of the Act was issued in 2016, bringing the number to 132.