DEBT: CROSS RIVER STATE GETS 34 MILLION NIARA FROM FAAC AS MARCH ALLOCATION

For a second successive month, Cross River State’s allocation from Federal Allocation is in the negative.

Figures just released by the Federation Allocation Accounts Committee, FAAC, shows that the state’s net statutory allocation for the Month of March is N34,960,344.53 (Thirty Four Million, Six Hundred and Thirty Five Thousand, Three Hundred and Forty Four Naira, Fifty Three Kobo).

While the state earned a gross statutory allocation of N2,222,635,051.79 (Two billion, two hundred and twenty two million, six hundred and thirty five thousand, fifty one naira, seventy nine kobo), a whopping N2,187,674,707.27 (Two billion, one hundred and eighty seven million, six hundred and seventy four thousand, seven hundred and seven naira, twenty seven kobo) was deducted at source to service debts incurred by previous administrations.

This leaves the state with a paltry thirty four million naira as allocation from federal allocation for the month of March.

This is coming on the heels of a similar abysmal figure of one hundred and seventy one million naira allocation for the month of February, 2022.

A communiqué issued at the end of a virtual meeting of FAAC for March 2022, held on Tuesday noted that allocations to the Federal Government, states and local governments rose to N590.54bn in February.

“The N590.54bn comprises statutory revenue of N337.43bn; Value Added Tax revenue of N165.63bn, excess bank charges of N7.47bn and non-mineral revenue of N80bn,” the communique said.

It added that the total deduction for the cost of collection to revenue-generating agencies was N23.98bn while the deduction for statutory transfers and refund was put at N80.49bn.

The balance in the Excess Crude Account was $35.371m.

The total distributable revenue of for the month of March was N590.54bn. The Federal Government received N236.1bn, the State Governments got N190bn and the Local Government Councils received N140.6bn.

The distributable statutory revenue of N337.43bn was available for the month. From this, the Federal Government received N165.2bn, the State Governments got N83.8bn and the Local Government Councils received N64.61bn. The sum of N23.75bn was shared with the relevant states as 13 per cent derivation revenue.

Financial analysts believe that it is nothing short of a miracle that the state has not grounded to a halt.