‘Nigeria shared N8tr revenue in 2013’
The three tiers of government have shared the sum of N8 trillion revenue in 2013 from the federation account, Daily Trust has gathered.
The revenue accrued from the sales of crude oil and Value Added Tax (VAT) among other sources.
The country recorded its highest revenue for sharing in February with N886 billion followed by March with N731 billion.
The month of October recorded the lowest revenue with N568.413 billion shared.
Last Wednesday, the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) shared N581.498 billion to the three tiers of government for the month of December 2013.
Addressing journalists, Minister of State for Finance, Dr Yerima Ngama, said the amount shared included N64.725 billion from VAT, N7.617 billion refunded by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and N35.549 billion from SURE-P.
He said that actual distributable amount for the month was N473.607 billion as against budgetary expected figure of N623.768 billion.
He said: “The distributable statutory revenue for the month is N473.607 billion, which is N150.161 billion less than the N623.768 billion that was budgeted for the month.
“Also distributed is the sum of N7.617 billion refunded by the NNPC to be shared to states and local governments. In addition, the sum of N35.549 billion is proposed for distribution under the SURE-P Programme.’’
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) also reported the breakdown of the distribution as the Federal Government received N221.161billion, representing 52.68 per cent; states got N112.176 billion, representing 26.72 per cent, while local governments received N86.483 billion, representing 20.60 per cent.
The minister also announced that N48.461 billion, representing 13 per cent derivation revenue, was shared among the oil producing states.
On VAT, the minister said that the gross revenue collected in December was N64.725 billion as against N91.730 billion distributed in November, representing a drop of N27.005 billion.
He said that the mineral revenue collected for the month was N379.122 billion, which was less than the N490.765 billion realised in November and also less than budgeted expectation of N465.057 billion for the month.
He stated that non-mineral revenue collected during the period was N100.828 billion, showing a reduced difference of N6.159 billion from the N106.987 that was collected in November.
Ngama said N6.343 billion was transferred to the nation’s Excess Crude Account (ECA) for December, adding that revenue realised in the month was poor.
He attributed the low revenue to serious disruption in oil production, vandalism of pipelines and “Force Majeure” declared at Bonny Terminal.
Also addressing newsmen, the Chairman of Finance Commissioners Forum, Mr Timothy Odah, said that the forum had extensive discussions on how best to resolve the issue of returns from the revenue collecting agencies.
He said that a committee, headed by the Accountant-General of the Federation, had been constituted to look into issues of returns from the agencies, especially NNPC.
“We want to know the average daily oil production so that we can use it as a yardstick to measure what they bring to us as the returns for the month henceforth,” he added.