FAAC: FG, states, LGs share N581.5bn for December 2013

The Federal Ministry of Finance on Thursday announced that the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) had shared N581.498 billion to the three tiers of government for December 2013.

The Minister of State for Finance, Dr Yerima Ngama, announced this in Abuja when he addressed newsmen on the outcome of the FAAC meeting which ended on Thursday.

Ngama said that the amount shared included N64.725 billion from Value Added Tax (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.

“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,’’ he said.

A breakdown of the distribution showed that 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.

He 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 yard stick to measure what they bring to us as the returns for the month hence forth,” he said.

He said that the committee would also look into the contentious issue of 10.8 billion dollars, alleged not to have been remitted to the federation’s account by the NNPC.

“The essence of the committee is to look into the explanation that was given by the NNPC in regards to the missing 10.8 billion dollars so that we will know if we will agree with it or not,” he explained. (NAN)