- FAAC Sets up Committee on Excess Crude Account Management
The Federation Account Allocation Committee on Thursday set up a committee to come up with rules that would guide the effective management of the Excess Crude Account.
The committee under the Chairmanship of the Delta State Commissioner of Finance, David Edevbie, has up to one month to submit its report.
The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, confirmed the development while briefing journalists shortly after the August meeting of FAAC members.
She also said the committee that was set up to carry out a comprehensive review of the reporting template of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation would submit its draft report to the committee next month.
Adeosun said that the ECA committee was saddled with the responsibility of coming up with rules that would guide the credit of funds into the account.
In recent times, the management of the ECA had been a subject of controversy between the federal and state governments.
For instance, the withdrawal of about $Ibn and another $496m from the ECA by President Muhammadu Buhari without the constitutionally required legislative appropriation had sparked outrage from some states and opposition political parties.
The funds were used to intensify the fight against Boko Haram and acquire military aircraft from the United States.
But Adeosun said, “The other matter discussed was progress on the new template that is being developed with the NNPC and the federation account and we are optimistic that we will have a draft before the next meeting.
“A committee has also been set up under the chairmanship of the Commissioner for Finance in Delta State to come up with rules surrounding the excess crude to ensure that we have a rules-based credit into the Excess Crude Account. They also intend to report back in the next meeting.”
On the allocation to the three tiers of government, the finance minister said the sum of N714.8bn was allocated as statutory allocation for the month of July.
Out of this amount, she said the Federal Government got N298.28bn, states N183.77bn while the local governments would share a total of N138.96bn.
In addition, she said the sum of N49.77bn was shared to the oil producing states based on the 13 per cent derivation principle while the revenue generating agencies’ revenues would get the sum of N44bn as cost of revenue collections.
She put the balance in the ECA at $2.33bn.
A communique issued shortly after the meeting stated that the sum of N597.97bn was generated as statutory revenue for the month of July.
This, it added, was lower by N96.69bn than the N694.67bn revenue received in the month of June.
