Finance ministry shares N669 billion amidst controversy

The Ministry of Finance has released N668.9 billion to the three tiers of government despite the deadlock that greeted the last

Premium Times reported that the committee said the release is for salaries to cushion the impact of the stalemate in the June 2018 meeting.

The impact of the meeting resulted into none payment of the June salary to many civil servants across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Hence, FAAC resolved to release May 2018 revenues meant for distribution in June to enable the various the governments meet their obligations to their workers.

A statement released on Friday, July 21, 2018, by the spokesperson of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Hassan Dodo, said, “The urgent need to cushion the undue hardships experienced by workers nationwide has made it necessary to distribute the May figures totalling N668.898 billion to the three tiers of government, while efforts are being intensified to address the unsatisfactory remittances.”

Dodo said the N668.9 billion is made up of statutory distributable allocation of N575.5 billion and N93.4 billion from the Value Added Tax (VAT).

The federal government got about N282.2 billion, state governments got N181.7 billion, while local government councils received N136.5billion.

The oil producing states received N53 billion as 13 percent derivation, with about N15.947 billion paid to the revenue generating agencies as costs of collections.

Disagreement follows sharing of N147 billion from NNPC

The meeting of the FAAC in June ended in a deadlock without members agreeing to share the N147 billion revenue provided by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

In the same vein, two other attempts to resolve the disagreement failed leaving members to postpone the meeting indefinitely last week.

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May revenue according to Ministry of finance

The statutory revenue of N575.5 billion received for May was lower by N37.582 billion than the N613 billion in April 2018.

For May 2018, about N93.4 billion realised from the Value Added Tax (VAT) was about N5.5 billion higher than the N87.965 billion distributed in April 2018.

From the VAT. the federal government received N13.453 billion, states got N44.843 billion, local government councils received N31.39 billion, while N3.737 billion was received by the revenue collecting agencies.