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FRC queries BPE over lack of four-year financial statement

By BusinessNews Staff on April 17, 2014

The acting Chairman, Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC), Mr. Victor Muruaku, has said the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) has operated for four years (2007-2014) without audited financial statements for the periods.

He said the privatisation agency had also failed to remit the sum of about N81.8 million into the Consolidated Revenue Fund as operating surplus for 2007.

Head of Central Accounts, BPE, Mr. Sanusi Ali, confirmed the agency owed the said amount to the federal government, adding that time was needed to encourage the management to make the payments.

Speaking at the FRC head office in Abuja where BPE was invited to defend its records and clarify an alleged lack of cooperation with the commission, Muruaku said the development was unacceptable to the commission and breached the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007.

It was gathered that after a November 2013 meeting between both parties, the FRC had mandated BPE to remit the said amount by the end of December and also submit its approved 2010 to 2012 financial statements before the end of April this year.

FRC also requested the agency to submit its approved annual budget for 2012-2013. However, BPE was yet to comply with any of the resolutions, a development which did not augur well with the commission. In trying to offer some explanations, however, Ali said the commission was in a dilemma in deciding whether to obey either of the FRC Act or that of the BPE and had had to contend with the directive from the National Assembly which had directed it to pay 100 per cent of privatisation proceeds into the dedicated account and draw from the budget to fund its operations.

He argued that there was a misunderstanding over the fact that some of the monies generated by the agency could not be classified as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to warrant paying a surplus to the CRF.

Muruaku said there were often times, directives to it to pay 100 per cent of the privatisation proceeds into the dedicated account.

He said there were fundamental issues which needed to be addressed, implying a possible amendment to the BPE Act.

On the issue operating without an audit financial statement for four years running, the BPE representative blamed the delay partly on the incessant change of leadership, noting that within the period under question, BPE has had five chief executives.

But his explanations failed to impress the FRC team, which considered them as lame.
The FRC boss consequently asked that the meeting be adjourned while a formal writing should be made to invite the Director-General of BPE, Mr. Benjamin Dikki, to provide more concrete explanation.

Further, the BPE had blamed its inability to submit its audited statements of accounts between 2010 and 2012 on the delays by the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) to approve and sign the accounts, citing an instance where its 2009 accounts were signed in March 2012.

It however emerged that the agency paid the sums of N200 million and N400 million into federal government’s coffers in 2007 and 2013 respectively although these were not part of the operating surplus in dispute.

The FRC boss said the new management was determined to bring any defaulting agency to book, adding that it would not hesitate to do the needful by contravening those in question should they fail to comply.

“We can’t sit back and watch government revenue being held back,” he warned.
He said:” For me, I can’t imagine that an agency could be operating for four years without an audited financial statement. Using the vice-president as an excuse is not acceptable.”

[This Day]

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