The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, said the Federal Government is automating its processes to ensure transparency and accountability.

The minister stated this yesterday in Abuja in his address at the stakeholders’ review meeting on the implementation of the revised policy on cash management and bottom-up cash planning organised for permanent secretaries and accounting officers or chief executives of ministries departments and agencies (MDAs) by the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation.

He said the meeting was very important as the new policy of funding capital projects through a bottom-up system was still a work in progress that needed the input of all to make it work.

He said the current administration was committed to adopting technology and automation in its operations to ensure integrity, transparency and accountability.
He encouraged the participants to embrace the latest technology and procedures and to keep looking forward and not fall into the temptation of saying the old way was easier.

The minister, however, warned that any MDA that failed to key into the new system would be denied funds for its capital projects. He said: “You should all have an open mind to embrace new technologies; that is the direction the world is going and there is no going back to the old ways.

“Henceforth, any agency that fails to comply with the new system would be cut off from the system and it will have no money to implement its capital projects.” He was optimistic that the 2024 capital projects, which have been extended to June 2025 would be largely implemented to the benefit of Nigerians.

Edun challenged the chief executives to keep their expenditures within the limit of their resources, warning that under the new administration, there would be “no such thing as printing of money and spending what you don’t have”.

“We spend what we have earned through revenue generation and what we have legitimately and prudently borrowed using the discipline of the financial market.

“The kind of revenue profiles that we can look forward to in terms of increased crude oil production at a time when the price is relatively high and also the savings from the removal of wasteful expenditure of our government previously are now providing constant additional funding for government coffers.

“These are important signals that there are more resources to implement the policies of the present administration,” he said. In her welcome address, the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Oluwatoyin Madein, said the meeting was meant to get first-hand feedback from all the participants in MDAs that supervise the execution of government policies.

She said the modification of the bottom-up cash planning was initiated to provide a set of rules and general guidelines for the conduct of government business and for planning and management of limited cash resources for effective and efficient service delivery.

Also speaking, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Sani Musa, advised the heads of the MDAs to embrace change, especially the advancement in technology, which he said, would help the government to block the leakages that distort cash flow.