The Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) on Thursday at its meeting held in Abuja set up a committee to come up with rules that would guide the effective management of the Excess Crude Account (ECA).
The Excess Crude Account, which is the account where oil earnings above the yearly budgetary crude oil benchmark are deposited, has been subject of controversy between the federal and state governments, with the latter challenging its constitutionality.
The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, who gave the hint on the setting up of the committee to journalists shortly after the August meeting of FAAC, said that Delta State Commissioner of Finance, David Edevbie, was appointed chairman of the committee which has one month to submit its report.
Specifically, the minister disclosed that the committee was set up to carry out a comprehensive review of the reporting template of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) would submit its draft report to the FAAC next month.
Adeosun said that the ECA committee was saddled with the responsibility of coming up with rules that would guide the credit of funds into the account.
The minister clarified: “The other matter discussed was progress on the new template that is being developed with the NNPC and the federation account and we are optimistic that we will have a draft before the next meeting.
“A committee has also been set up under the chairmanship of the Commissioner for Finance in Delta State to come up with rules surrounding the excess crude to ensure that we have a rules-based credit into the Excess Crude Account. They also intend to report back in the next meeting”, she added.
Adeosun also confirmed that the FAAC distributed N714.8 billion to the three tiers of government for the month of July with the Federal Government receiving N298.28 billion, while states and local governments got N183.77 billion and N138.96 billion allocations respectively.
She said that the sum of N49.77 billion was shared to the oil producing states based on the 13 per cent derivation principle while the revenue generating agencies’ revenues were allocated the sum of N44 billion as cost of revenue collections.
