Senate Moves To Regulate CBN Intervention Fund

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Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria

By Nuel Suji – The Nigerian Senate on Wednesday moved against the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) over an alleged recklessness disbursement of intervention fund‎, directing an investigation.

The decision to checkmate CBN’s intervention fund came through a bill sponsored by Senator Rose Oko.

CBN Governor

The bill titled: “A bill for an Act to Amend the Central Bank of Nigeria Act 2007 to Ensure Transparency and Accountability in the Operation of the Bank and Subject Intervention Advances to the Approval of National Assembly.”

The Senate accused the apex bank of contravening the provision of the Constitution and the Fiscal Responsibility Act through ‎extra-budgetary intervention to selected bodies, institutions and agencies.

Leading debate on the motion, Senator Oko lamented that there is no mechanism in place to monitor and tracking the CBN intervention funds.

She added that lack of proper tracking of CBN intervention fund has made it difficult for the lawmakers to properly oversight the agency.

He explained that many countries across the globe intervene in their economy ‎like that of CBN programme but with legislative approval.

Citing countries, Oko said Ghana, Liberia, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda are subjecting their intervention fund to legislative approval.

Reeling out various intervention funds by CBN‎ without National Assembly approval, Oko said ” the N620 billion bailout for five banks, namely Afribank Plc, intercontinental Bank Plc, Union Bank of Nigeria, oceanic Bank and Finbank plc, various donations to tertiary institution running into several billions, the N300 billion bailout to states drawn from $2.1 billion NLNG’s taxes and dividends to pay salaries.

“N2.2 trillion said to have been set aside by the CBN to fund various sector of the economy‎ like Commercial Agricultural credit Scheme (CAC) N200 billion, Power and Aviation intervention fund (PAIF) N300 billion, MSMEDF- N200 billion, real sector support facility (RSSF)-N300 billion, and Nigeria Electrical Market Stabilization facility (NEMSF) N213 billion totaling N1.223 trillion among others.

“The total capital budget for 2016 was N1.8 trillion. If N1.2 trillion was indeed disbursed or intended ‎as intervention fund, then an amount almost size the capital budget was disbursed without appropriation and tracking to know effectiveness of the intervention in the economy.

“In addition, the CBN was quoted to have said that in 2015 it’s intervention rose to N899 billion compared to N668 billion in 2014.”

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