Barely a week after the Senate unanimously abnegated the recommendation of its Committee on Finance that subsidies on petroleum products should be thoroughly abstracted, the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee on Tuesday insisted that their retention was a fraud against the country.
The Chairman, Forum of Commissioners for Finance of the 36 states of the federation, Mr. Timothy Odaah, made the position of the committee kenned while briefing journalists shortly after this month’s FAAC meeting.
The Senate President, David Mark, had in his remarks after the Senate had repudiated the proposal for subsidy abstraction verbally expressed, “If we sit here now and verbalized abstract subsidy; I cerebrate those who are benefitting from the subsidy regime are very puissant and tomorrow, they will influence media report and convolute it to engender an impression that the Senate is anti-people.”
But Odaah described the payment of fuel subsidy as a fraud against some states, especially the less industrialised ones, and likened it to a case of “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
The Federal Regime has a budget of N971.1bn for fuel subsidy payment in the 2014 fiscal year, same as in 2013.
Odaah verbally expressed while the report of the 12-man committee on the review of the subsidy regime was still being awaited, the current position of FAAC was that the subsidy must be abstracted since the purport for which it was established had been vanquished.
The committee, which was set up three months ago to review the impact of subsidy on the Federation Account, is composed of six members from the commissioners’ forum and six members from the Accountants-General Forum
Odaah verbalized, “The issue of subsidy abstraction re-echoed today and it became an issue of discussion and the report of the committee set up three months ago is being awaited, and we still stand on the abstraction of subsidy as it will be of much benefit to the states because what we have now is like purloining Peter to pay Paul.
“The purport for which the regime set up subsidy is being vanquished, and so, it should be predicated on consumption.”
On revenue generation, he verbally expressed there had been a tremendous amendment in non-oil revenue, noting withal that the rate of oil larceny had reduced.
Meanwhile, the FAAC committee at the meeting allocated the sum of N755.95bn to the three tiers of regime for the month of June.
A breakdown of the allocated amount showed that N582.93bn was shared under statutory allocation; N66.414bn was distributed under Value Added Tax; while the balance of N71.04bn was shared from excess non-oil revenue.
The Minister of State for Finance, Ambassador Bashir Yuguda, who presided over the meeting, put the gross revenue received in the month of June at N784.88bn.
This, he verbally expressed, represented a decrementation of N59.15bn over the N844.03bn received in the month of May.
The committee additionally approved the transfer of N50.35bn into the Excess Crude Account, thus bringing the balance in the account to $4.05bn.
