The federal government, through the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, has launched a new technology-based application named: “Project Lighthouse” to track government debtors as part of efforts to generate revenues through non-oil sources.
The new application would be used by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget & National Planning to track the credit profile of the government, ascertain details of outstanding amount due and amount recovered from debtors. It also gives Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) access to update debt records progressively.
Launching the Project Lighthouse Debt Analytics & Reporting Platform yesterday in Abuja, the minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed acknowledged that despite operating in a technology and data-centric world, her ministry failed to imbibe the culture of using data and information to guide the formulation, implementation and impact assessment of its initiatives and policies or even in carrying out its mandate as a Ministry.
She said that modus operadis presents a number of challenges. “First, our policies are not usually empirically based. Second, we are not able to effectively track the implementation and impact of these policies, initiatives, programmes and mandate. Third, we lack data to help guide the revision or optimisation of these policies.”
However, to consolidate on the current effort of the project, the minister said the debt recovery application was built to be monitored by the new debt recovery unit in her ministry.
The debt recovery unit in created with a mandate to capitalise on the effort made by the project consultants to provide the government with up-to-date records into its credit status by harmonising debt records across all MDAs within the country, give debtors access to a platform to view and offset debt in a seamless and secured manner as well as strengthen the institutional framework for enforcement and management of the Federal Debt Recovery Plan.
