TSA inflows cover government’s borrowings, CBN tells Sanusi

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) yesterday debunked its former Governor and now Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi’s II claim last week that the Federal Government, under the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration had overdrawn on its account with the apex Bank to the tune of N4.7 trillion. Supporting its defence with data, the CBN, also the banker to the government, insisted that government still had a net balance of over N1.19 trillion in its Treasury Single Account (TSA) and declared Sanusi’s claims as “totally false and wholly fabricated.” TSA is a financial policy introduced by the federal government in 2012, to consolidate all inflows from the country’s ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) by way of deposit into commercial banks, traceable into a single account at the CBNQuoting Section 38.2 of the CBN Act 2007, Sanusi had maintained that the Central Bank, a lender of last resort, had exceeded its lending limit to the government, a development he noted had weakened the credit worthiness of the country by the international community. Speaking at a policy monitoring dialogue hosted by Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy and Development, at in Abuja last week, Sanusi said the CBN’s lending to the government since Buhari came in had spiked from about N1.5 trillion to over N4.5 trillion. Sanusi also said: “The CBN-FGN relationship is no longer independent. In fact, one could argue their relationship has become unhealthy. CBN claims on the FGN now top N4.7 trillion equal to almost 50% of the FGN’s total domestic debt. This is a clear violation of the Central Bank Act of 2007 (Section 38.2), which caps advances to the FGN at 5% of last year’s revenues. Has CBN become the government’s. Source: Guardian