FAAC shares N615bn for 3 tiers of government – The 36 state governments?? yesterday won the protracted battle between them and the federal government. At the cash sharing meeting that took place yesterday,? the Federal Government agreed to release $2billion from the excess crude account for the states for the continuation of contracts that have been stopped.
The Minister of State for Finance, Alhaji Yerima Lawan Ngama announced this to journalists in Abuja after the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting which ended late last night. Ngama noted that the committee shared N615.757billion for the month of October this year among the three tiers of government.
He said: “ Apart from this we are also going to effect some payment from the excess crude account. About $2billion will be released to various tiers of government.
“And with that we believe that the various projects that have been started will be completed to put this economy on the path of growth.”
He recalled that the meeting was adjourned last week,? saying: “We met last week and we had to adjourn. We resumed today and we have already successfully concluded the meeting.”
Asked why it took so long to share the cash, he noted that the commissioners and governors were no longer comfortable with the soaring increase of subsidy of petroleum products.
The minister explained that because the nation’s pump price is fixed, the Federal Government ends up in a situation that the subsidy increases every month making the burden unbearable for the commissioners and governors who believe that the cost is unjustifiable.
He said, “For sometimes we have been deliberating on this issue of petroleum subsidy. The commissioners are not comfortable with the rising cost of fuel subsidy. The government has it as a policy to subsidize petroleum products but because of the increasing amount of pump price and the fact that our own fuel pump price is fixed, we end up in a situation where the subsidy has been increasing from month to month.
On the sharing of revenue, Ngama said for the for the month of October,? the gross revenue available from the Value Added Tax (VAT) was N51.640billion as against N60.739 billion distributable in the preceding month, resulting in a decrease of N9.099billion.
He added that the distributable statutory revenue for the month is N440.471 billion which shows a decrease of N112.672billion or 20% whwn compared to that of September.