The House of Representatives Committee on Finance, on Thursday, reassured its commitment in supporting the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI) to be fully established to recover all Federal Government assets and investments.
The Chairman of the committee, Hon. James Faleke, APC- Lagos, gave the assurance during an oversight visit to the headquarters of MOFI in Abuja.
Hon Faleke commended the management team led by the managing director, Dr. Armstrong Takang for starting on a good footing and praised former President Muhammadu Buhari for resuscitating MOFI, which he said had been comatose since its establishment in 1959.
According to him, “MOFI came into existence in 1959 and has been dormant until the President Buhari administration brought it up and reorganized it to make it more viable. MOFI is holding all our assets in all the corporations and agencies of government. So, setting up a management team to harness the resources of the country was a great idea and we as a committee and indeed the House of Representatives would give it all the support it needs to flourish.
“So, we came today and we have given them time to consolidate. This is our first visit and on average, everything is going on well. Today, we made some observations and guided them in some areas and we believe they have taken note of those concerns and all will be well”, Faleke stated.
Speaking earlier, the managing director, Dr. Armstrong Takang, while briefing the committee members had said that MOFI was before the restructuring never operated as a management and active entity and was domiciled in the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation.
According to him,“So, the administration of President Buhari made the decision that it was important to have finance management reforms to move MOFI from just being a shelf entity to becoming an operating entity effectively as a private entity firm that is owned by the federal government, the same way that Singapore did in 1974’
Dr. Takang further added that the restructuring of MOFI was important noting that “As for us to restructure our economy, it is important we place more emphasis on our investments, our assets, to see how they can contribute to our economy and that was the basis upon which, MOFI was restructured last year.
“Part of the reform include the changing of the governance structure where there is a Governing Council that the president chairs and has some ministers as members’ ad three individuals and there is a board of directors that is chaired by Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, former minister of finance and five other independent members. There are also four of us in the Executive Management Team on board and of course, there is the management team that I lead”
On the mandate given to MOFI, the managing director said it includes, “To list the various assets that the federal government owns across different asset classes- at last we can establish and know what the government owns. Now, you can tell what the government owns unlike before, it was difficult to tell what the government owns. We are to create an assets register.
According to him, “We are to work closely with the portfolio companies to make sure we support them in different ways including corporate governance and recapitalisation as well as other services that will make them deliver on their mandates for which they were established. They include BOI, Galaxy Backbone, NIGCOMSAT, NNPCL, etc.
“We are also working with the government to mobilise our investments into other sectors of the economy such as housing, technology etc.”, he explained.
Speaking on what the new board has done so far, the MD stated that “What we have done is to ensure that MOFI is established to have a governance structure to interface with the portfolio companies and provide support that is needed. And our board was established and we have been through a lot of policies- portfolio governance, investment policies, human resource policies, etch”
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