BEVERLY HILLS, August 22, (THEWILL) – Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has revealed that the revenue shared by Nigeria’s Federal, states and local governments dropped by N184.2 billion to N467.8 billion in August against the N652 billion shared in July.
In the breakdown of revenue given by her representative, Permanent Secretary, Mr Mahmoud Dutse, at the end of the monthly Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting on Tuesday in Abuja, Gross statutory revenue was put at N387.31 billion.
She said the decline in revenue was caused by a drastic fall in revenue from Companies Income Tax (CIT) due to the expiration of the deadline for filing tax returns adding that the shared amount was inclusive of Value Added Tax (VAT) of N80.53 billion.
She, however, said oil revenues recorded an increase due to rise in export sales by 62 million dollars but that there were issues of leaking flow lines, shut-ins and shutdowns at terminals for maintenance.
“The increase in the average price of crude oil from 50.27 dollars per barrel to 51.05 dollars per barrel and a significant increase in export volume by 1.20 million barrels resulted in increased revenue from export sales for the federation by 62 million dollars,” she stated.
Adeosun said the Federal Government received N193.04 billion, states N130.69 billion and local governments N98.01 billion adding that N31.59 billion was given to the nine oil producing states as their 13 per cent derivation.
She put the balance in the Excess Crude Account (ECA) at 2.3 billion dollars.
Mahmud Yunusa, Chairman, Forum of Finance Commissioners, said it was time for the states to begin to look inwards to shore up their revenue revealing that reforms were currently on going in states to optimise the collection processes for revenue, adding that he was optimistic it would reduce dependence on revenue from the centre to about 50 to 60 per cent.
“States will explore other options of revenue to depend less on revenue from the centre,” he said.
“We need to block leakages in revenue and come up with reforms to shore up revenue.
“We are also working on cost of running governance and any cost that is not necessary in running government needed to be reduced.”
