The federal government has so far consolidated over 20,000 bank accounts since the implementation of Treasury Single Account (TSA) in the country.

Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris who disclosed this, said by aggressively implementing the TSA across board, the federal government has also eliminated multiple banking arrangements that were hitherto used as fraud channels.

Speaking at a 2-day workshop for financial correspondents yesterday in Abuja, the AGF noted that the consolidation of accounts has further brought about transparency and effective tracking of government revenues.

Stiff implementation of the TSA policy, he said, has among other achievements led to the blocking of leakages and abuse that characterized the public finance management prior to its advent.

He said, “As part of our stewardship, TSA has enabled us to make tremendous gains to the federal government and to the Nigerian economy. We have successfully eliminated multiple banking arrangements, resulting in consolidation of over 20,000 bank accounts which were spread over Deposit Money banks across the country.

“TSA has taken us out of the era of indiscriminate borrowings by MDAs and saved government the charges associated with those borrowings which hitherto amounted to N4.7 billion monthly”.

Idris disclosed that his office is at the verge of signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a private estate developer for the construction of mass housing on the large expanse of land housing in Orozo.

He said the housing facility will be allocated to staff of the Treasury on owner-occupier basis.

He added that his office has also concluded plans with Hewlett-Packard (HP) for the training and certification of its software engineers and prospective Nigerians at large.

Stating that capacity building is one of his cardinal goals, the Accountant General said in that regard,  his team of management has successfully trained 2,537 staff of the Treasury in different grade levels between February and April this year.