Some government agencies on Wednesday opted out of funding from the federal budget and refunded millions of revenues due to the Consolidated Revenue of the Federation.
They took the decision at the ongoing investigation by the Senate Committee Finance on remittances of internally generated revenues by ministries, departments and agencies of government.
The panel is probing the MDAs compliance to the payment of one per cent Stamp Duties on all federal contracts.
The affected agencies told the Senator Solomon Adeola-led finance committee that they had agreed to willingly opt out of federal budget.
Specifically, the heads of National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration, Nigeria Communication Satellite Limited and Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission, to varying degrees informed that their agencies should be taken out from the federal budget.
The Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof. Moji Adeyeye,
told the committee that her agency could conveniently exit the federal budget to the extent of all overheads as well as capital provisions.
She added that her agency could start the implementation from the 2021 budget to free funds for other uses and hopefully reduce the size of budget deficit.
Similarly, the Chairman of NERC, Mr Sanusi Garba, also stated that his agency was ready to completely exit the federal budget.
Garba promised to refund accumulated N28m being the one per cent stamp duties on contracts awarded by the agency that were not remitted by contractors within one week.
The Director General of NIGCOMSAT Limited, Abimbola Alale, also told the committee that it was ready to exit the federal budget with regards to overhead.
She told the committee that the agency would seek partners to inject capital into the agency programmes to yield revenue for the government as lack of capital had been the major impediment of the agency.
The three agencies and others that appeared before the committee were asked to reconcile their IGRs and the one per cent stamp duty accounts for remittance running into billions of naira.
The panel also asked them to report back with the reconciliation for the committee to determine if any remittance was still outstanding to the Fiscal Responsibility Commission.
Adeola, commended the DG of NAFDAC and heads of other agencies for proposing to exit the federal budgeting.
