ICAN push for better public fund management

THE Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) is pushing for the adoption of the Accountability Index (AI) by the three tiers of government to enhance prudent management or public finance.

Making the presentation to members of Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) at the weekend, ICAN President, Mr Razaq Jaiyeola said AI will focus on policy-based fiscal forecasting, budget scrutiny and audit, budget credibility and management of assets and debts.

The initiative according to Jaiyeola will improve the quality of governance in the country and tackle corruption in the public sector.

“The objective is to assess the performance of the various tiers of government-federal, states and local government.

“We want to measure their performance, we will rank them and from such rankings, we would be able to address certain things within the financial management mechanism that we have in the country.”

He enumerated the five pillars of AI to include: budgeting issues, what are the kinds of parameters that we look at to be able to measure the performance of the budget;

“That is a pillar and we have several indicators; we have several dimensions with regard to that;

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“We have another one that borders on the management of assets and public debt.

“At the end of the day, each pillar will be ranked and we will have various scores by each state, each local government, by the various agencies of government and by the time that is done, we will know how each state is performing, we will know how each ministry is performing and at the end of the day it will address a lot of things that will move our nation forward.”

Jaiyeola said at the end of the day there, will be a lot of improvements in the public accounting system thus enhancing the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) in the process will be enhanced.