FG plans audit of N23trn Ways and Means debt– Edun

The Federal Government has revealed its intent to audit the N23 trillion Ways and Means debt.

The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Wale Edun, announced this at the ongoing Public Wealth Management Conference organised by the Ministry of Finance Incorporated on Tuesday in Abuja.

Edun also stated that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited has been asked to improve oil production to boost revenue.

He added that a bill will soon be presented to the National Assembly that will authorise the removal of all taxes and levies that constitute nuisance from the country’s tax system as a measure to wean itself from future Ways and Means indebtedness.

The government, Edun added, will pursue policies that will allow it to harvest revenue in real-time from government-owned enterprises and Corporate entities.

Edun said, “We have to stem liquidity. The Central Bank has led the way in pointing out that the ways and means have to be tailed down and eliminated and that is what we agree with.

“We are doing in that direction, there was an inherited amount of N22.7trn in backlogs. We are auditing it and it is like when I am ready to pay a loan from a bank and I ask for an audit before finding the agreed sum to pay.

“But apart from that, how do you get your ways and means down? We have to get revenues up and expenditure reduced as much as possible.”

Ways and Means is the money that the Central Bank of Nigeria lends to the Federal Government in the meantime to augment spending based on the time the revenue is generated.

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Olayemi Cardoso, has said that the apex bank will no longer give Ways and Means to the President until the previous loans are repaid.

Olayemi noted that it was one of the measures taken by the apex bank to curtail the economic downturn currently plaguing the country.