The total monthly payout by the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) to the three tiers of government amounted to N533bn (US$1.74bn) in November (from October revenues). This was a decline of N25bn from the previous monthly distribution.
We wrote of a payout in November but the committee only closed its meeting on Thursday (07 December) due to challenges to the accounts submitted by the NNPC. The corporation is said to have admitted to errors in its submission and agreed to the more rigorous scrutiny of its data in months ahead.
The state governors were critical of the corporation’s conduct. This was to be expected since they mostly depend on the monthly payout and have seen a sharp fall in the payment since the slide in the oil price in mid-2014. That payment in aggregate is about N300bn less than the norm before the slide.
The gross statutory distribution in November was N443bn, and a little higher than the previous month. (The total was actually lower because the extras such as VAT were lower, at N90bn vs N134bn.) The sum consisted of N317bn from mineral revenues and the balance from non-mineral.
At the press conference following the meeting, the committee noted that receipts from petroleum profits tax had increased strongly in October whereas those from VAT were only slightly higher. Our chart does not show a clear trend for better or for worse so we hesitate to say that the FGN has turned the corner in terms of revenue collection.
We have taken the data for the latest payout from local media reports. The accountant general’s office supplies the revenue numbers up to December 2016, shared out in January, and the National Bureau of Statistics through to September, distributed in October.
FBNQuest Research