New TSA Tariff: FG orders MDAs to bear charges

Under the new tariff regime, the Federal Government has ordered all Ministry Department Agencies to bear the service charges on all payment to the Treasury Single Account (TSA).

The order was disclosed in Abuja on Tuesday by the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) at the stakeholders’ sensitisation forum on TSA.
According to the statement issued by AGF, the order takes effect starting from yesterday, November 1, 2018.
The statement stated that, the newly approved Treasury Single Account (TSA) tariff model mandated that the service charge on payment to its ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) from November 1, 2018 would be borne by the payer.
The new model would therefore replace the previous one wherein the merchant—in this case, the federal government—bore the charges on all transactions to the service providers on behalf of payers.
Earlier it was reported that different renegotiations to addressed and reduce cost of running the policy were carried out by the parties involved.
In the previous tariff regime, the federal government owed the technology service providers and the participating deposit money banks up to two years in service charge.
In 2012, the pilot TSA scheme commenced using a unified structure of accounting for the majority of fully owned Federal Government  MDAs for accountability and transparency in public fund management.
In August 2015, the initiative was fully implemented and covered over 1000 MDAs after a presidential directive.
At commencement, all players, including all commercial banks, SystemSpecs the developer of the Remita platform on which TSA runs and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), agreed that a fee of  one per cent of funds collected is payable.