Excess crude account drops to $3bn •$1bn withdrawn for Oct allocation augmentation

FOLLOWING the withdrawal of one billion dollars for October allocation augmentation , the Excess Crude Account has dropped to three billion dollars.
Minister of State for Finance, Dr Yerima Lawan Ngama, speaking after the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting, in Abuja, Thursday, said that October revenue was short of the budgetary allocation of N465.057 billion .

“In the month of October 2013, the total mineral revenue that accrued to the federation account is 443.052 billion. This is a little short of N465.057 billion that is in the budget for the month of October 2013 hence we have a negative variance of N22.005 billion” he said.

However, he said, the amount collected in October exceeded the amount collected in the previous month by N11.979 billion, adding that for non-oil mineral revenue, a total of N96.501bn was collected which is also below the budgeted N158.711 billion that is in the budget by N62.21 billion.

“We have the total actual collection of total revenue N539.553 billion which is less than the N623.768 billion that is in the budget by N84.215 billion.

“The total funds available for distribution have been adjusted with transfers to excess crude. And this month we transferred N80.651 billion to excess crude. Thus leaving N458.901 billion after cost of collection to Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) of N2.097 billion and cost of collection to Nigerian Customs Service of N3.085 billion.

“There is also a refund to NCS of N0.713 billion. So, after these deductions we had N453.006 billion left for distribution to the three tiers of government which was done as follows: Federal Government, N213.825 billion; all the states put together are going to share N108.455 billion. Then the local governments are going to share N83.614 billion. The oil-producing states will get their 13 per cent derivation which amounts to N47.112 billion,” the minister said, stressing that the three tiers of government shared N525.247 billion this month, “in addition, we have the normal SURE-P amount of N35.5 49 billion which will be shared amount the three tiers of government. Again, this month also, NNPC has made good its promise to pay N7.617 billion which will be shared to the states and local governments as the repayments due to the outstanding amount to from the NNPC,” he added
The Minister also noted that the sum of $1 billion was withdrawn from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) to be distributed among the three tiers of government.

The amount, it was learnt, was approved by President Goodluck Jonathan to shore up the dwindling oil revenue.