Federation Accounts: FG, states, LGs share N559.101bn for December 2011 Report by NNEWS Correspondent	The minister who also spoke on the federal government’s desire to complete the over 600 unfinished projects across the country, added that there was need to block all leakages to encourage rapid development of all the sector of the economy
The Minister of State for Finance, Dr Yerima Ngama on Monday announced that the federal, state and local governments shared N559.101 billion from the Federation Account for December 2011.
Dr. Ngama, who made the announcement while briefing newsmen on Monday after the meeting of the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) in Abuja disclosed said the federal government approved the amount for the three tiers of government. The minister however explained that arising from the late arrival of the figures FAAC was not able to compute the breakdown of the total revenue to be distributed to the different tiers. He however gave the assurance that `` by Tuesday morning the breakdown of the figures would be distributed and made known to the public.’’ The minister said the strike called by the organised labour had affected the speed with which some of the information needed was to be gathered for FAAC. ``This is as regards especially the information on internally generated revenue and Value Added Tax (VAT),’’ he said. The minister pointed out that it was while the committee was still meeting that it received the confirmation of the total VAT collection for December. He said ``the figure of N57.1billion for this was received from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation as we were meeting.’’ Dr. Ngama assured Nigerians that the funds would be credited to the accounts of the various beneficiaries as soon as possible after work fully resumes today. He said the FAAC meeting needed to hold urgently after the strike as a result of President Goodluck Jonathan’s pronouncement on workers’ salaries. President Jonathan had on Jan. 4 directed FAAC to meet not later than Jan. 15 to ensure that workers’ January salaries were paid on or before Jan. 20. On what is to be realized from the partial removal of fuel subsidy, the minister Ngama said the federal government was still hopeful of realizing its objectives. ``We do hope this year will be a prosperous year and we are happy that we are all united in ensuring this. ``We are hopeful that the entire various programmes we have developed and which we have discussed with the commissioners will be implemented successfully, particularly the SURE programme. ``We have asked the state commissioners to go and draw their own programmes from the revised amount that will be made known to them on the subsidy savings in order to ensure that our people get the benefit of the deregulation that we are embarking upon,’’ he said. The minister said the committee had already computed the savings from the subsidy removal, as well as what the savings would have been. ``But due to Monday’s change in the price of fuel, which has now made it partial deregulation and not full deregulation, the committee has to do the computation again,’’ he said. Dr. Ngama however disclosed that the National Assembly would have to approve the allocation of the funds as a supplementary budget before the subsidy savings could be distributed. The minister also disclosed that the Accountant-General of the Federation had effected the 25 per cent reduction in basic salaries of political office-holders in the executive arm of government as directed by Mr. President on Jan 7. While allying fears on the nation’s financial status, Dr. Ngama said ``the total foreign reserve of Nigeria is over N32 billion US dollars, and noted that`` a country with a foreign reserve of this amount cannot be a poor country but a rich country.’ The minister who also spoke on the federal government’s desire to complete the over 600 unfinished projects across the country, added that there was need to block all leakages to encourage rapid development of all the sector of the economy.

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