FG recovers N9.12bn through whistleblower policy
The Federal Government has recovered N7.8 billion, $378 million and 27,800 pounds through its whistleblower policy.
The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, said this yesterday while briefing State House correspondents after the cabinet meeting.
She said government intended to institutionalize the whistleblower policy with a view to properly handle its increasing magnitude.
She said she also updated the council on the numbers of tips received, investigations dealt with and the types of monies recovered through the policy.
“I also reported that the whistleblower team has recently come back from a trip to the UK. The United Kingdom government was giving us trainings on whistle blowing, how we should institutionalise it. The team spent sometime with revenue office in UK. They spent sometime in customs office and they took them through what they have been able to do,” she said.
She said the FEC approved a three-year debt strategy to reduce Nigeria’s reliance on short-time borrowing particularly treasury bills, 91 days treasury bills, “costing us 21% and moving from domestic borrowing into external borrowing.
“When we came in, what we owed was 84 per cent domestic and 16 per cent external borrowing. We have moved to 77:23 as a result of Eurobonds that we have done and refinancing of maturing obligations. Our terms of maturity were 7.15. We have now extended it to 11.25. That gives a little bit of room to allow the investment we have made in capital projects to filter into our tax system and allows us to manage the debt.
“What that means is reducing our cost of funds and reducing our interest cost because the cost of borrowing is much more less and in a planned manner and our average borrowing has reduced from 18% to about 14%. We are confident that as interest rates begin to ease, we will reduce our cost of borrowing even further.”
The minister put the total capital budget released so far for 2017 at N1.248 trillion.