The Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) has shared the sum of N675.650 billion, including VAT for the month of November.
Dr Yerima Ngama, the Minister of State for Finance, made this known in Abuja when he briefed newsmen on the outcome of the FAAC meeting which ended early hours of Friday.
“The distributable statutory revenue for the month is N540.754 billion, which is N81.853 billion more than the previous month’s revenue.
“Also distributed is the sum of N7.617 billion refunded by the NNPC. In addition, the sum of N35.549 billion is proposed for distribution under the SURE-P Programme.
“The total revenue distributable for the current month is N675.650 billion, including the value added tax of N91.730 billion,’’ he said
A breakdown of the distribution showed that the Federal Government received N252.239 billion, representing 52.68 per cent, States N127.939 billion, representing 26.72 per cent, while Local Governments received N98.636 billion representing 20.60 per cent.
He said that a total of N56.390 billion representing 13 per cent derivation revenue was shared among the oil producing states.
Ngama said that a total of N675.650 billion revenue was received for November; the figure was higher than the N568.413 billion received in October, giving a difference of N107.237 billion.
On VAT, the minister said that the revenue collected in November was N91.730 billion as against N66.346 billion distributed in October.
He said that there was an increase of N25.384 billion from the November revenue and that of October.
Ngama said that the mineral revenue collected for the month was N490.765 billion, adding that the amount exceeded the N465.057 billion budgeted for the month compared to the N443.052 billion realised in October.
He said that the non-mineral revenue collected in November was N106.987 billion, showing a difference of N10.486 billion from what was collected in October.
The minister said that N56.998 billion was transferred to the nation’s savings accounts, including the Excess Crude Account (ECA) and royalty, bringing the total money in the ECA to 3.18 billion U.S dollars.
Ngama said that the monies would be disbursed by Dec. 13, so that workers would begin to receive their salaries to prepare for the Christmas festivities.
Ngama said that the committee had also agreed to work together to improve the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of states.
He said that the decision became necessary following a recently published statistics on the IGR of states by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which showed that most of the states were doing poorly.
“We need to educate the people on the importance of paying tax. It does not only generate more revenue for the state, but tax payment also makes government accountable.
“When people know that it is what they contributed that government is spending, they will begin to hold government more accountable than they do now with oil money, which is more like manner from heaven,’’ he said.
Meanwhile, Timothy Odah, the Chairman, Finance Commissioners Forum, who spoke with newsmen shortly after the meeting, said that the forum had extensive discussions on how best to enhance revenue of the states.
Odah noted that states were becoming overly dependent on federation allocation, adding that their IGR seemed to be dwindling with each passing year.
“This is not a good development, considering the clarion call that every state should try and intensify its IGR, yet more than three-quarter of the states have less than two digits in IGR.
“This in general is not healthy for the country and we are seriously going to work to improve these ratings,’’ he said.
