The Federal Government has announed the discovery of 46,821 ghost workers in 215 Ministries, Departments and Agencies of Government (MDAs).
Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of finance Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala revealed this in Abuja yesterday during the presentation at the 2013 ministerial platform.
She said these discoveries were made after the introduced the Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System (IPPIS).
“The Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System enhances efficient personnel cost planning and budgeting as personnel cost will be based on actual verified numbers and not estimates. 215 MDAs (153,019 staff) are on IPPIS as at January 2013 and work is ongoing to bring in other 321 MDAs not yet on IPPIS. About 46,821 ghost workers have also identified,” said the minister.
The discovery of the ghost workers she said, was part of government’s reform measures aimed at ensuring transparency and accountability in the management of its resources.
She said the government was able to do this through the introduction of the Treasury Single Account, which is a unified structure of government bank accounts that gives a consolidated view of the cash position.
Okonjo-Iweala also said that the government has reduced the rate at which it overdraws on its accounts from N102 billion in 2011 to N19 billion in 2012.
The minister explained that the introduction of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) has helped to reduce how the government account is being overdrawn.
With the introduction of the Government Integrated Financial Management and Information System (GIFMIS) in April 2012, Okonjo-Iweala said 58 per cent of the nation’s budget are now executed through the GIFMIS platform. She said this has helped to boost the speedy execution of the government budget.
The GIFMIS is aimed at improving the acquisition, allocation, utilisation and conservation of public financial resources using automated and integrated, effective, efficient and economic information systems.
She said budget execution is expected to rise to 79 per cent by end of third quarter 2013.
In order to increase non oil revenues, the minister said that through tax enforcement mechanism, the government has recovered over N10.65 billion as outstanding tax liabilities.
Okonjo-Iweala added that the modernization of tax administration and operation had helped the government register 227,140 new tax payers in 2012 alone.