Taxes drop, oil income rises as govt revenue falls by N184bn

Revenue shared by the federal, states and local governments slumped to N467.8 billion in August, N184.2 billion less than the N652 billion shared in July.

Kemi Adeosun, minister of finance, said the shared amount was inclusive of value added tax (VAT) of N80.53 billion — a fall from N81.6 billion in July.

In the breakdown of revenue given by her representative, Mahmoud Dutse, a permanent secretary, at the end of the monthly federation account allocation committee (FAAC) meeting on Tuesday in Abuja, gross statutory revenue was put at N387.31 billion.

She said the decline in revenue was caused by a drastic fall in revenue from companies income tax (CIT) due to the expiration of the deadline for filing tax returns.

She, however, said oil revenues recorded an increase due to rise in export sales by $62 million.

“The increase in the average price of crude oil from 50.27 dollars per barrel to 51.05 dollars per barrel and a significant increase in export volume by 1.20 million barrels resulted in increased revenue from export sales for the federation by 62 million dollars,” she said.

“Despite the increases, there were issues of leaking flow lines, shut-ins and shutdowns at terminals for maintenance.’’

Adeosun said the Federal Government received N193.04 billion, states N130.69 billion and local governments N98.01 billion.

She also said N31.59 billion was given to the nine oil producing states as their 13 per cent derivation.

She put the balance in the Excess Crude Account (ECA) at 2.3 billion dollars.

Mahmud Yunusa, chairman, forum of finance commissioners, said it was time for the states to begin to look inwards to shore up their revenue.

“States will explore other options of revenue to depend less on revenue from the centre. We need to block leakages in revenue and come up with reforms to shore up revenue.

“We are also working on cost of running governance and any cost that is not necessary in running government needed to be reduced.”

He said reforms were currently on in the states to optimise the collection processes for revenue, adding that he was optimistic it would reduce dependence on revenue from the centre to about 50 to 60 per cent