Why foreign investments lag in Nigeria -ACCA

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) has said Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) into Nigeria do not increase in recent time because of delay in rending financial statements by many agencies in the public sector.

ACCA’s Country Head, Mr. Tom Isibor disclosed this at the practical learning and development programme, themed: ‘Timely Rendition of Financial Statements by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs)’, which was organised by the ACCA in collaboration with Financial Reporting Council (FRC) of Nigeria and the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF), Thursday in One Man Village, Nasarawa State.

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“Delay or non-rendition of financial statements has great implications for Foreign Direct Investment (FDIs) into Nigeria,” Isibor said.

According to the ACCA Country Head, Nigerian public sector players should brace up because since the COVID-19 outbreak, there had been new demands on public sector organizations and public financial management to improve transparency, accountability and sustainability.

He said, “And this is primarily coming from investors, people, individuals, organizations and governments that want to bring money into the Nigerian economy but they want to see how we manage our public accounts and want to see what our spending pattern is before they feel confident and comfortable to bring money into the economy.”

Meanwhile, a total of 120 public institutions comprising of government parastatals, agencies, and government business entities filed their financial statements with the FRC in 2021.

The Executive Secretary/Chief Executive, Financial Reporting Council (FRC) of Nigeria, Mr. Shuaibu Ahmed, who disclosed this at the event described it as a modest progress.

Ahmed said the FRC was working with the National Assembly and other relevant agencies to make it a rule that the budget proposals of public sector entities in default of filling their Annual Financial Statements (AFS) of the previous year would not be considered and approved for the coming year.

He, however, said plans had been concluded to further impose fines and penalties on those agencies which had failed to comply with financial regulations in line with the provisions of the FRC Act and its extant rules.

He added that most of the financial statements filed with the council are not in timely manager.

Isibor said the programme sought to find solutions to all the issues militating timely rendition of audited financial statements among public institutions.

But the FRCN boss said a situation where critical institutions of government, some of them apex regulatory bodies, are over two to three years behind in their audited accounts will no longer be tolerated going forward.

He, however, noted that the council was not unmindful of the existing challenges being faced by MDAs in accessing their monthly bank statements on a timely basis from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) since the commencement of the Treasury Single Account (TSA).