By Gift Samuel, Esther Atani
Abuja: In line with the presidential directive that all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) enroll in the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), October 2019 has been set as a deadline for enrollment.
This is just as the federal government warned, that funds will no longer be allocated to MDAs not registered on the platform and that the Office of the Accountant General will pay government employees directly through the IPPIS system.
In a memo sent by the Accountant-General’s Office, Ministries and Agencies were directed to forward pertinent staff details to the IPPIS departments or risk personnel costs being withheld.
According to the Accountant-General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, in 2017 the Federal Government saved N67 billion and N130 billion in 2018 on personnel cost using the platform.
The IPPIS has shown advantage in updating and retrieval of personnel records for administrative and pension processing; eliminating ghost workers from the payroll; aiding manpower planning and budgeting as well as complying with global best practices.
According to the presidential directive, all MDAs drawing their Personnel Cost from the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) should enroll on IPPIS.
Lending her voice to this, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed recently in Abuja, reiterated that President Muhammadu Buhari has given a deadline of October 2019, that every Ministry, Department and Agency (MDAs) not under the IPPIS will not be getting their salaries.
She noted that the Federal government is making an effort to reduce personnel cost, inclusive of pension costs at over N3.0 trillion which has continued to rise.
“The federal government is however taking steps to contain the rising personnel costs, including an October 2019 deadline by Mr. President for all MDAs to implement IPPIS”, she said.
On the federal government’s expenditure framework, Ahmed said the debt service for 2020 is projected at N2.452trillion, with an increase of N2.737trillion in 2021,and she explained that there has been an increase in debt service, which was a result of the increase in borrowing by the federal government.
She added, that recurrent expenditure cost for 2020 is projected at N4.749trillion; while N4.883trillion is the projection for 2021 and N4.990trillion projection for 2022.
“We are projecting aggregate federal government revenue of N7.081 trillion in 2020, which is a slight movement of N6.998 trillion for 2019; revenue projection for 2021 is N7.281trillion and N8.052trillion was projected for 2022.
She, however, pointed out that the increase for the recurrent expenditure is as a result of the rise in personnel costs and overhead cost, which became necessary due to additional new ministries and ministers.
With this deadline, MDAs have been strongly urged to comply to avoid delay in salary payments.
