The cash in the Excess Crude Account (ECA) is $2.078 billion, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Finance, Mrs Anastasia Nwaobia, said yesterday. THE NATION NEWSPAPER has more:
Mrs Nwaobia addressed reporters after the monthly Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting in Abuja, said the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has not refunded the $1.48 billion it was directed to refund to the nation’s coffers as recommended after the forensic audit of the alleged missing cash from the Federation Account.
The meeting was attended by the permanent secretaries of the states and the acting Accountant General of the Federation.
She attributed the delay in this month’s FAAC meeting to the transition of power in many states of the federation which has made many states not to form executive councils. She added that the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) also exited on the June 12 while Directors and Accountants in the AGF’s office were sitting for qualifying examination to occupy the office following the exit of the past AGF.
The Federal Government, the states and local governments shared N409.354 billion from the Federation Account for the month of May. This is slightly higher than the N388.339 billion shared for April.
While the Federal Government got N151.805 billion, state got N76.998 billion; local governments gott N59.362 billion. Another N29.071 billion was distributed as 13 per cent derivation to the oil producing states.
For Value Added Tax (VAT), the Federal Government got N8.182 billion, state governments got N27.274 while local governments received N19.092 billion. A cash of N31.240 billion was shared among the federal, state and local governments as exchange gains proceeds while the Federal Government received an additional N6.330 billion as refund from the NNPC.
The collecting agencies’ allocations got allocations in the following order: Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS)-N2.403 billion as four per cent of collecting what went in for statutory allocations, the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) received N2.881 billion as seven per cent of cost of collection and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) collected N1.541 as its cost of collection. For VAT, the FIRS collected an additional N2.273 billion as its four per cent cost of collecting VAT.
Mrs. Nwaobia said the gross revenue of N324.061 billion received for the month was higher than the N282.062 billion received in the previous month by N41.999 billion.
She attributed this increase to an “improvement in the bulk revenue that came from exchange gains on foreign exchange transaction because the exchange rate has been steady and higher than the benchmark exchange rate projected for the year.”
However, she said delays in issuance of this year’s third quarter export permit led to a drop of about 160,000 barrels per day (bpd) in April and that the shut down and shut-in of trunks and pipelines at terminals also continued to impact negatively on crude oil revenue.
An increase in the average price of crude oil from $56.04 in March to $59.88 in April she said, brought about $19.70 million gain in revenue. Government she explained, “is making efforts to block leakages and we hope that revenue will continue to improve.”
The permanent secretary said the non-oil revenues are expected to perform better in the latter part of this year due to some mechanisms put in place by the FIRS.
Mrs Nwaobia dismissed claims that the Federal Government was owing federal workers’ salaries stating that the ministry plans to fund the relevant account next week so that federal workers will receive their next salaries.
