How FG, states, LGs shared N3.88trn in 6 months – NEITI

Federation Accounts Allocation Committee shared N3.879trn to the Federal Government, states, local governments, and other statutory recipients in the first half of this year, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative has said, TopNaija reports.

A breakdown of the disbursements showed that N1.53trn went to the Federal Government, while the states got N1.29trn and the 774 local government areas received N771.34bn. This is contained in the latest edition of the quarterly review of NEITI in Abuja on Tuesday.

The review stated that the N1.53trn received by the Federal Government in the first six months of 2020 was 4.28 per cent lower than the N1.599trn it got in the first half of 2019, and 7.36 per cent lower than the N1.652trn it received in the first half of 2018.

The story was the same for the states and Local Government areas.

“For states, a total of N1.298trn was disbursed in the first half of 2020. This was 2.8 per cent lower than the N1.35trn disbursed in the first half of 2019, and 5.6 per cent lower than the N1.375trn disbursed in the first half of 2020,” the report stated.

For local government areas, the 2020 first half disbursements were 2.64 per cent and 3.04 per cent lower than the corresponding disbursements for 2019 and 2018 respectively.

The report, however, noted that disbursements in Q2 2020 were 1.09 per cent higher than total disbursements in Q2 2019 and 3.66 per cent lower than the one for Q2 2018. FAAC disbursements in the second quarter of 2020 stood at N1.934trn.

This was made up of N739.2bn to the Federal Government, N629.3bn to state governments, and N375.4bn to the 774 Local Government areas.mThe report pointed out that the total FAAC disbursements in the second quarter of 2020 was slightly lower than the N1.945trn disbursed in the first quarter of 2020.

“This aligned with the projections made in the previous issue of the NEITI Quarterly Review which projected lower FAAC disbursement in the second quarter,” the report stated.

It attributed the 0.55 per cent decrease in Q2 2020 to a couple of factors such as the rebound in oil prices in the second quarter as a result of ease of lockdowns by countries across the world.

Others include the adjustment of the official exchange rate by the Central Bank of Nigeria from N307 per dollar to N360 per dollar in March resulting in higher naira disbursements.

NEITI also disclosed that from January to May 2020, actual government revenue was N1.62trn, representing 62 per cent of the expected pro-rata revenue of N2.62trn from the revised budget.