The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), at the weekend released its Economic Report for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2018, showing that although the Federal Government’s expenditure could not be significantly cut, revenue nose-dived for the period, after oil and non-oil revenue under-performed.
It earned N946.9bn in non-oil revenue was below the proportionate quarterly budget estimate of N1.4tr and the level in the preceding quarter by 32.4% and 17%, respectively.
The fiscal operations of the Federal Government resulted in an estimated deficit of N910.41bn, an increase of N421.79bn, or 86.31% over the proportionate quarterly budget deficit of N488.62bn.
Specifically, the report showed that federally-collected revenue (total collections before distribution among the three-tiers of government) at N2.412tr in the review period came 27.4% below the N3.321tr. It also was 4.8% lower.
Of the total accruals, the Federal Government retained N916.44bn, as against its N1.826tr expenditure, resulting in an estimated deficit of N910.41bn during the period.
The expenditure was however lower than the proportionate quarterly budget estimate of N2.376bn by 23.1% and that of the preceding quarter by 3.4%.
A breakdown of the total expenditure, the CBN added, “showed that the recurrent component accounted for 87.8 per cent, while capital and statutory transfers accounted for 5.9 and 6.3%, respectively.
The bulk of recurrent expenditure went into non-debt obligations, which gulped 53.8%, while debt service payments accounted for the remaining 46.2%.
Specifically, the apex bank put gross oil receipt at N1.465tr or 60.7% of total revenue, which was below the proportionate quarterly budget estimate by 23.7%, but higher than receipts in the third quarter of 2018 by 5.1%.
“The lower non-oil revenue relative to the proportionate quarterly budget estimate was due to the shortfalls in receipts from Federal Government Independent Revenue and VAT in the review period.
