Niger State Commissioner for Finance, Kpako Bello has expressed fears that many states in the country may run into financial crisis this year if the revenue accruable to the federation account suffers same draught like last year,
Bello, who spoke in Minna during the media highlight of the state 2014 budget presided over by Commissioner for Economic Planning, Yahaya Dansalau, said some states may find it difficult to pick their bills in the new year if federal receipts continue to dwindle.
The Commissioner said that with 82.4 per cent of the state budgetary projection fund from the federation account allocation “it will be difficult to survive should anything go wrong with the inflow of revenue from the centre”.
He further said that aside from the 11.3 per cent to be raised from bonds, the state internal generated revenue is 6.3 per cent which cannot sustain the state for a month.
The Commissioner explained that if care is not taken this year, many states would be thrown into unprecedented economic crisis as a result of the failure of Federal Government revenue agencies to remit revenue to FAAC for sharing to the three tiers of government.
“The last three months of last year were really turbulent for states because most times, we gather in Abuja for days without anything to share.
“If we are not careful in the next few months, we will not get anything to share, we were in Abuja two to three days ago but there was no money.”
He however said that the state is putting in place policies aimed at cushioning the effect of any distortion of the revenue flow from the centre this year, “Last year, we never envisage the kind of crisis that happened.”
Bello blamed the drop in the income of the national treasury majorly to oil thief, which he said now carried out in large scale” at source, thief at point of sale as well as after sales of the Oil”.
His words, ” We have reasons to believe what the Governor of Central Bank, Lamido Sanusi said over some missing money but its just that we were not bold enough to come out and support him.
“The figures may even be more than what he said was missing because oil theft is now carried out from source, at the point of and after sale”.
