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Senate lauds OGFZA’s capacity to fund expenditure from IGR

The Senate Committee on Trade and Investment has praised the leadership of the Oil and Gas Free Zones Authority (OGFZA) for its capacity to generate enough internal revenue to take care of its recurrent expenditure. At OGFZA’s 2018 budget session with the lawmakers, chairman of the committee, Sabo Mohammed, told the managing director, Mr. Umana…

Managing Director of OGFZA, Umana Okon Umana

The Senate Committee on Trade and Investment has praised the leadership of the Oil and Gas Free Zones Authority (OGFZA) for its capacity to generate enough internal revenue to take care of its recurrent expenditure.

At OGFZA’s 2018 budget session with the lawmakers, chairman of the committee, Sabo Mohammed, told the managing director, Mr. Umana Okon Umana, that the panel was highly impressed by OGFZA’s ingenuity to generate enough cash to pay staff salaries and overheads from the 2018 budget cycle.

According to a statement, Mohammed also noted that OGFZA’s budget presentation was thorough, detailed and clear, requiring no follow-up questions and explanation. The committee brought the session to a close by asking Umana to take a bow and return to his office.

The committee chairman and Nelson Effiong, a member, said OGFZA’s performance was unique and worthy of emulation by other agencies of the Federal Government. They contrasted OGFZA’s resourcefulness with the case of other agencies which rely solely on handouts from the government to fund both their recurrent and capital expenditure.

Umana had formally informed the Federal Ministry of Finance in a 6 December 2017 memo that the authority could pay its staff salaries and overheads from internally generated revenue. He requested the Federal Government to suspend the funding of the recurrent expenditure of OGFZA from treasury funds.

Financial independence that permits self-funding is one of the six goals that OGFZA set for itself under the Umana-led management in its three-year roadmap which became operational at the beginning of last year.

The roadmap kicked in a series of reforms which allowed Umana at year’s end to tell the Minister of Finance that following the measures taken by the new management of OGFZA to increase Internally generated revenue, the Authority would no longer depend on treasury funding to meet her recurrent expenditure requirements (salaries and overheads).

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