Revenue allocation to federal, states and local governments dropped by N18.2 billion or 6.09 per cent, leaving three the tiers of government with a total of N281.500 billion for April, signalling a harder time ahead of the governments. The sum of N299.747 billion was shared in the month of March.
The Federation Account Allocation Committee met Wednesday in Abuja to share the accruals.
Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosun attributed the drop in allocation on the huge decline recorded in the price of crude oil. She said there was a revenue loss of $45.9m as a result of the drop in average price of crude oil from $39.04 in December, 2015 to $29.02 in January.
“Monies that have just been shared were sales undertaken when the oil price declined to as low as $28 per barrel before recovering to the present level. This is the lowest oil price in recent history,” she said.
Mrs Adeosun noted that “while oil production increased slightly between December 2015 and January 2016 despite explosions at Escravos terminal, she said force majeure declared at Brass terminal, shut-in and shut-down of pipelines at other terminals for repairs maintenance affected government revenues.”
These developments also led a decline of N18.8 billion in gross statutory revenue from N232.61 billion in March to N213.81 billion in April.
As a result of these fall in revenue and what was left for the three tiers of governments to share, the statutory revenue distributable also dropped to N207.878 billion as against N226.875 billion previously shared.
Of this amount, the federal government got N101,215 billion, states received N51.338 billion while local governments got N39.579 billion. The oil producing states got N15.745 billion as their 13 per cent derivation while balance in the Excess Crude Account (ECA) now stands at $2.261 billion.
The Minister announced that N6.330 billion was refunded by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to the Federation Account while N2.424 billion being the exchange gain was equally shared by FAAC stakeholders.
For Value Added Tax (VAT) distribution, the minister said N9.39 billion was allocated to the Federal Government, states received N31.32 billion while the local government councils were allocated N21.92 billion.
