Revenue crisis: FG withdraws $1bn from ECA

THE Federal Government has withdrawn the sum of $1bn (N160bn) from the Excess Crude Account.

President Goodluck Jonathan gave the withdrawal approval to augment the shortfall in revenue to the federation account. The Minister of State for Finance, Dr. Yerima Ngama, while briefing journalists on Thursday in Abuja on the outcome of this month’s Federation Account Allocation Committee meeting, confirmed the drop in revenue. He said the N443.052bn received in the month of October fell short of the budgetary amount of N465.057bn.

The shortfall, it was learnt, led to the withdrawal of the $1bn from the ECA, thus bringing the new balance in the account to $3.59bn.

The amount in the account as of the beginning of this year was about $10bn.

The country had experienced persistent decline in oil revenue owing to oil theft and pipeline vandalism.

The government had said if crude oil theft continued, revenue loss could rise to $12bn.

Ngama said, “In the month of October 2013, the total mineral revenue that accrued to the federation account was N443.052bn.

“This is a little short of N465.057bn that is in the budget for the month of October 2013; hence, we have a negative variance of N22.005bn.”

However, Ngama, who is also the chairman of FAAC, said the revenue collected in October exceeded the amount collected in the previous month by N11.979bn.

For the non-oil mineral revenue, a total of N96.501bn was collected, which was also N62.21bn lower than the budgeted N158.711bn.

He said, “We have the total actual revenue collection of N539.553bn which is less than the N623.768bn that is in the budget by N84.215bn.

“The total funds available for distribution have been adjusted with transfers to excess crude.

“And this month, we transferred N80.651bn to excess crude, thus leaving N458.901bn after the cost of collection to Federal Inland Revenue Service of N2.097bn and the cost of collection to Nigeria Customs Service of N3.085bn.

“There is also a refund to NCS of N0.713bn. So, after these deductions, we had N453.006bn left for distribution to the three tiers of government, which was done as follows: Federal Government,  N213.825bn ; all the states put together are going to share N108.455bn; then the local governments are going to share N83.614bn.”

The oil-producing states, he added, would get their 13 per cent derivation, amounting to N47.112bn.

The Chairman, States Finance Commissioners’ Forum, Mr. Timothy Odah of Ebonyi State, expressed appreciation to the President for the intervention.

He said, “We are grateful to Mr. President for his magnanimity in the approval of this $1bn. This is not revenue augmentation because we have stopped that since August of this year. What the President just did is to boost our take-home revenue following the dismal financial performance by the NNPC.

“This intervention will greatly boost our revenue bases and enable us to meet some of our obligations.”