The Federal Government has made progress in the forensic probe into the N30 trillion Ways and Means loans advanced to the immediate past administration by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy Wale Edun revealed this to the senators yesterday.
He also blamed the spike in freight costs for the delay in the takeoff of the electric and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) vehicles.
The minister pledged that his ministry would intensify efforts in monitoring the revenue generating agencies to be up and doing.
Edun made the assertions when he appeared in the company of the Accountant-General of the Federation, Dr. Oluwatoyin Madein, before the Senate Committee on Appropriation in Abuja over budget performance.
Edun said: “The procurement of electric and CNG buses and conversion kits, more importantly, has been held up by a spike in freight costs.
“It’s just the ingenuity of one of the young men that is in that business that we have got a bulk carrier that has a lower freight cost.
“Otherwise, the trade cost per bus became daunting and it made people just hold on to see whether in fact this procurement was profitable for them.”
On debt payments, he said: “We have paid $700 million in debt services for 420 national development agencies and others.”
Speaking on the contentious Ways and Means facility, Edun said: “We are also interrogating the N22.7 trillion that we met on the underground. We had instituted a forensic audit to see the impact.
“We are also interrogating the revenues that are due to us from everybody because we need to in view of the fact that Ways and Means is going down rather than up. So, we are servicing all the debts.”