FG Records N66.5bn Deficit, As Oct Revenue Slips 38.4% Below Budget Estimate

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) says the Federal Government’s revenue has continued to perform below expectations, hampering its capacity to keep up with funding of the 2018 budget.
According to the CBN’s Economic Report for October published on Monday, not only was the N682.06bn gross federally-collected revenue for the period below the 2018 monthly budget estimate of N1.107tr by 38.4%, it was even lower than the N831.45bn earned in the preceding month by 18%.
Of this amount, the Federal Government could only retain N280.96bn as revenue for the review month, a 56.1% compared to the budget estimate of N792.31bn, at a time when its total provisional expenditure stood at N347.48bn, resulting in an estimated deficit of N66.51bn. The revenue for October was however above the N248.14bn collected in the preceding month by 40%.
While total recurrent expenditure constituted 78.7% of total, capital expenditure was 17%, and transfers 4.3%, a breakdown of recurrent expenditure showed that non-debt obligation was 67.7%, debt service payments accounted for 32.3% of the total.
The shortfall relative to the monthly budget estimate, the CBN explained, “was attributed to lower revenue from both oil and non-oil sources.”
While oil revenue, for example at N422.13bn or 61.9% of total revenue, was however 34.1% lower than the N640.21bn monthly budget estimate; besides representing 11.5% decline below the N477.06bn recorded in October.
“The shortfall in oil revenue relative to the monthly budget estimate was attributed to the drop in the average price of crude oil and declining production arising from the shutdown of some pipelines
“Non-oil revenue, at N259.93 billion or 38.1% of total revenue, was below both the 2018 monthly budget estimate of N466.91bn and the N354.38bn received in September 2018 by 44.3% and 26.7%, respectively. The lower revenue collection relative to the monthly budget estimate was due to the shortfall in most of the components
Total estimated statutory allocations to the state governments, the reported continued, amounted to N225.41bn, lower than the 2018 budget estimate of N354.04bn by 36.3% and the receipt of N247.50bn in September 2018 by 8.9%.
In the area of agriculture, the report noted that a total of N577.35bn has been released in respect of 568 projects under the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme (CACS) between the inception by the CBN and September 20, 2018 to participating banks for disbursement. Zenith Bank led the pack with N120.16bn disbursed to 75 projects; followed by UBA Plc’s N81.06bn in 50 projects; Sterling Bank, N72.17bn to 42 projects; and First Bank of Nigeria, N42.89bn to 99 projects.

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