•House of Representatives
The House of Representatives yesterday quizzed management teams of various Deposit Banks over the non-remittance of multi-million naira commission accrued from Value Added Tax (VAT) paid through REMITA platform from 2015 to 2022.
Chairman, House Committee on Public Accounts, Hon . Bamidele Salam who presided over the ongoing investigation into alleged revenue leakages through REMITA platform and non-compliance substantively with standard operating procedure and other allied service agreements held in Abuja, specifically directed Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) to calculate and remit the VAT) into government recovery accounts.
Remita is a financial solution gateway technology used by the federal government for the collection of revenue for Ministries, Departments and Agencies to the Treasury Single Account (TSA), reports Nigerian Tribune.
The lawmakers who spoke during the session also expressed concerns issues regarding evidence of remittance of VAT components of REMITA collections and collection of fees in the first regime of the REMITA transaction.
In his presentation, Executive Director, Mr. Ahmed Liman affirmed that the bank did not remit the VAT for the period of 8 years.
“We believe that REMITA is saddled with the responsibility of sharing the commission fees between the payment-receiving parties.
“In our mind, we think REMITA has done the needful before sharing the fees between the parties.”
The Executive Director also reacted to the second issue on the collection of fees in the first regime of the REMITA transaction, he said that the bank charges 0.75 per cent on all the payers who used the REMITA platform.
He added that the bank received N254,489,013 from the Accountant General through REMITA in 2018.
Hence, the lawmakers unanimously ordered the Guaranty Trust Bank to calculate and remit the VAT on the commission fees received from the platform from 2015 to 2022 into the Federal Government recovery accounts domiciled with the Central Bank on Nigeria (CBN).
Other Banks that appeared before the committee on the same issues were Keystone, Zenith Bank, Sterling Bank, Polaris Bank, FCMB, Ecobank and Wema.
The lawmakers also referred the aforementioned banks to the reconciliation sub-committee in order to address the discrepancies that were noted.
The affected banks are expected to reconcile the accounts and get a new date to re-appear before the Committee.
