Yet again, monthly receipts as gross revenue for August further dropped by about N28.67 billion to about N601.64 billion compared to about N630.3 billion in July due production challenges including a force majeure declared by Shell and series of shutdown of trunk lines and pipelines at various terminals impacted negatively the monthly output.Tthis is quite worrysome as the government have recently spent huge amount of money on illegal oil bunkering amongst other things.
Nevertheless, a total distributable revenue amounting to about N611.70 billion was yesterday shared among the three tiers of government for August.
It came as Chairman, Forum of Finance Commissioners, Mr. Timothy Odah, also said the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) believes the recent court judgment that the judiciary be put on the first line charge was unimplementable although it does not intend to bring the court judgment into contempt.
He said the matter was still being considered by the respective state governments to a final resolution on the issue.
Odah also re-echoed the committee’s stance that the oil subsidy programme be removed and the monies given to the states to better manage and prioritise the needs of their people.
However, addressing journalists after the monthly meeting of the committee in Abuja, Minister of State for Finance, Alhaji Bashir Yuguda, said gross revenue from value added tax (VAT) within the month under review also dropped by about N3.95 billion to about N61.51 billion compared to about N65.46 billion in July.
The minister also said the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had paid N10 billion as first installment as part of its N206 billion indebtedness to the federal government.
According to the breakdown in statutory distribution, the federal government received about N238.08 billion while the states got about N120.76 billion as well as about N93.10 billion to the local governments.
The sum of about N44.84 billion was shared to oil and gas producing states as under the derivation principle.
For VAT, the federal government received about N8.85 billion, while the states got about N29.52 billion as well as the local governments which got about N20.66 billion for the month.
