Time to pay salaries? FG shares N559.03bn with states

States are now a step closer to paying salaries as the federal government shared more than half a trillion for the month of June, the highest in since July 2015.

The three tiers of government shared N559.03 billion from the federation account for June 2016, significantly higher than the N305.128 billion shared in May.

Despite the activities of oil vandals and the reduction in Nigeria’s production level, the government had a sizable increase in revenue due to the increase in revenue to efficiency in collection by the revenue generating agencies.

“The big cause of the increase is the improvement of non-oil revenue from FIRS. The FIRS improved its performance between last month and this month by N165 billion,” Kemi Adeosun, minister of finance, said.

“And that accounted for the change in revenue and also, there was also an improvement of N12.6 billion by Nigeria Customs Service, as well as the exchange gain of N79.2 billion.

“This is a significant improved performance especially customs that was able to do so in spite of the scarcity of foreign exchange and the restrictions on the 41 items.

“So we are quite encouraged by that because it means that some of the reforms that we had started around collection improvement are beginning to bear fruit.”

John Inegbedion, chairman of commissioners of finance forum, said with the improved revenue for the month, all 36 states would be able to pay salaries for the month.

Asuquo Ekpenyong, commissioner of finance, Cross River state, said his state would start processing May and June salaries for payment.

Giving a breakdown of the amount shared, Adeosun said N412.3 billion was distributed under statutory allocation; N67.4 billion under value added tax  (VAT) revenue while the balance of N79.27 billion was allocated from gains made from exchange rate differential.

She said the government received N199.75 billion; states N101.3 billion, local governments N78.11 billion while N17.12 billion was shared to oil producing states based on the derivation principle of 13 per cent.

For VAT, she said the federal government received N9.7 billion, states N32.35 billion while local governments got N22.67 billion.

“The gross statutory revenue of N538.78 billion received was higher than the N237.46 billion received in the previous month by N301.32bn.

“The average price of crude oil increased from 32.26 dollars in February to 38.64 dollars in March2016, resulting in 92.99 million dollars increase in federation export revenue.

“There was an outstanding increase in Companies Income Tax and Petroluem Profit Tax with complementary increases in import duty and royalties.”

Adeosun put the balance in the excess crude account at $3.94 billion as at July 20, indicating an increase of $1.68 billion over the the 2.26 billion dollars in the previous month.

When asked about plans to stimulate the economy away from the looming recession, the minister said that there was no need for panic as the fundamentals of the economy were still strong.