Challenges of Implementing a TSA in Africa
By Jean-Philippe Vion[1]
For years, development partners have promoted the implementation of a treasury single account (TSA) in developing countries as the main instrument to optimize cash management. Centralizing all public monies in a single account should strengthen oversight and facilitate the mobilization of idle cash to cover essential expenditure.
The TSA reforms in sub-Saharan Africa have focused mainly so far on coverage. The TSA must be as comprehensive as possible. That means consolidating most of the public entities' bank accounts that are scattered in commercial banks into the national TSA. Consolidation can be achieved by identifying all public bank accounts opened in commercial banks, defining closure plans and transferring the balances to the TSA at the central bank. This approach was successfully implemented, with the support of the IMF, in Mali for instance.[2]
In Francophone Western Africa, the coverage of TSAs has significantly improved over the last years.[3] Now, it’s time to have a look at a second issue, which has not drawn much attention so far. This issue concerns the structure of the national TSA. In many countries, the TSA remains just a set of bank accounts, juxtaposed side by side in the central bank's accounting books, without much linkage between them.
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