The Treasury Single Account (TSA) as an Instrument of Financial Prudence and Management: Prospects and Problems

Abstract

The Treasury Single Account (TSA) was recently implemented fully in the Nigerian economy by the present government in order to ensure prudence and probity in the management of financial resources. With the TSA government expects to block all loopholes and leakages of financial resources of the government and also ensure a robust financial management system. The paper therefore provides the conceptual meaning of the TSA and also gives its expected benefits to the economy of Nigeria such as enhance system of financial management and control, unification of various Accounts of government, reduction of the costs of government borrowing and ensuring of optimum utilization of government financial resources. The paper also analyses the objectives of the TSA systems and its various Accounts such as TSA main account, Subsidiary Account, ZBAs, Transit and Imprest Account among others. The paper finally discusses the prospects of the TSA system and its challenges and concludes that the system requires political will, honesty and determination so as to overcome the various challenges identified in the paper in order to achieve the expected benefits of the system

Keywords: Single treasury account, probity, financial prudence and accountability