In bid to track debtors and recover debts, the federal government through the office of the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, has launched a new technology-based application named: “Project Lighthouse”. This application will enable FG to track government debtors and also generate revenue through the Non-Oil sources.
According to the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget & National Planning the new debt recovery application would be used 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.
During the Launch of the Project Lighthouse Debt Analytics & Reporting Platform yesterday in Abuja, Mrs Zainab Ahmed the minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, affirmee 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.”
Minister Zainab Ahmed said the debt recovery application was built to be monitored by the new debt recovery unit in her ministry.
The mandate upon the debt recovery unit is 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.
