Report Says Nigeria loses N49 billion in two months from Crude Price

The global drop in crude oil prices continued to affect Nigeria, as the country recorded about N48.7 billion loss in revenue from oil exports in November and December, 2014.

The Accountant General of the Federation, Jonah Otunla, stated this in his revenue report during the January Federation Accounts Allocation Committee meeting held in Abuja on Tuesday.

According to Mr. Otunla, the country suffered a substantial loss in revenue of about $77.53 million (about N13.025 billion) in November as a result of the massive drop in crude oil price at the international oil market.

He said the loss dropped to about $52.34 million (about N8.79 billion) in December, in addition to a 33 per cent decrease in the volume of export of the country’s oil for the two months, which translated to a loss of about $159.88 million (about N26.9billion).

Consequently, the AGF said the trend in declining oil revenues had continued during the month of January 2015, which saw gross revenue for the month decreasing by about N73.94 billion, from N490.03 billion in December 2014 to N416.096 billion.

He also attributed the declining revenue situation to the continued shutdown of some oil production facilities, which resulted in the shut-in of operations on some oil export trunk and pipelines at various export terminals.

Revenue yields from non-oil sources, he noted, also performed poorly below 2014 budgetary estimates by about N54.624 billion (about N165.323 billion as against N110.699 billion that was realized.)

According to the AGF, apart from the distributable statutory revenue for the month of about N416.096 billion, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation refunded about N6.33 billion to the federal Government, being balance of the share of the N450 billion revenue illegally withheld in 2011 from crude oil sales.

Again, about N8.574 billion was realized from exchange rate gain, while the NNPC also paid about N776 million it owed the Federation Account, in addition to about N4.419 billion.

However, total revenue available for distribution to the three tiers of government, including the value added tax, Mr. Otunla said, was N500.130 billion.

The Minister of State for Finance and Chairman of the Committee, Bashir Yuguda, said the Federal Government was allocated about N194.349 billion, or 52.88 per cent; states N98.576 billion, or 26.72 per cent, and local governments N75.996 billion, or 20.6 per cent, while 13 per cent derivation to oil producing states took N39.45 billion.

Mr. Yuguda, who debunked insinuations that the country was broke, said contrary to insinuations, the government has been working hard to meet its obligations to workers on a regular basis, while servicing of the country’s debts and issued bonds have not failed whenever they were due.

The minister announced that the balance in the excess crude revenue account has dropped to about $2.060 billion, with the Naira component of the account at about N19 billion.

While announcing that a committee has been constituted to work out modalities for the sharing of the $1.48 billion recovered from the NNPC at the end of the recent audit of its operations by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the minister asked the Federal Government to make the full report available to all Nigerians “very soon.”