—As federal revenue declines by over N28.6bn
Oscarline Onwuemenyi
17 September 2014, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) on Tuesday allocated N611.77 billion to the Federal, states and local governments for the month of August.
The Minister of State for Finance, Mr. Bashir Yuguda, made the announcement in communiqué read shortly after the FAAC meeting in Abuja.
According to him, the total revenue distributable for the current month including Value Added Tax (VAT) is N611.77 billion.
The Minister said that the country recorded a N28.67bn decline in gross federally collected revenue from N601.65bn received in August to N630.32bn for July.
He said there was decline in revenue in the month of August which was attributed to the Force Majeure declared by Shell and a series of shutdown of Trunklines and pipelines at various Terminals.
“However, payments and returns by some blue-chip companies and increase in the receipt of foreign CIT boosted non oil revenue for the month.”
He added that, “The gross revenue of N601.648bn received for the month was lower than the N630.325bn in July by N28.67bn.”
According to him, despite the revenue drop, the committee allocated the sum of N611.76bn to the three tiers of government as statutory allocation for the month of August
Yuguda said the August allocation, was N42.82bn lower than the N654.58bn shared in July
He said N504.7bn was shared under statutory distribution, N61.51bn under Value Added Tax while N35.54bn was allocated under the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Program.
He said the sum of N10billion being refund of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to the federation account was also shared by the committee.
While giving a breakdown of the distribution, he said after deducting the cost of collection to the Federal Inland Revenue Service and the Nigerian Customs Service, the Federal Government from statutory revenue received the sum of N238.08billion representing 52.68 per cent.
The Minister noted that the 36 states shared the sum of N120.76billion representing 26.72 per cent while the sum of N93.11 billion was allocated to all the 774 Local Government Councils.
Similarly, the sum of N44.85billion was allocated to the oil producing states based on the 13 per cent derivation principle.
Furthermore, he noted, the committee agreed to share the sum of N59.05 billion under Value Added Tax revenue.
He said the Federal Government shared N8.85billion while states shared N29.52billion as local governments shared N20.66 billion.
Yuguda said that the committee transferred the sum N25billion to the Excess Crude Account thus bringing the balance in the account to $4.1billion.
The Chairman, Forum of FAAC Commissioners, Mr Timothy Odaah, in an interview with pressmen at the end of the meeting said that teh court order on judiciary may be difficult to implement
“It would be difficult to implement the order of the court which directed that funding of the judiciary be made as first line charge.
“Since this year’s budget had already been approved, it would be difficult to accommodate the demands of the union,” he said.
Odah however called on the states to improve their internal revenue generating capacity to enable them effectively cushion the impact of the drop in statutory allocation.