Between January and September last year, the Federal Government recorded a fiscal deficit of ₦889.61 billion in its operations, figures obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria have revealed.
The 2018 budget which was signed by President Muhammadu Buhari had a total spending of ₦9.1 trillion made up of ₦2.87 trillion for capital expenditure, ₦3.51 trillion for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure while ₦2.01 trillion was projected to be spent on debt servicing.
The N9.1tn budget was expected to be financed from ₦2.99 trillion to be generated from oil revenue, ₦31.25 billion from Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas dividend while ₦1.17 billion was expected to be realised through revenue from minerals and mining.
To fund the budget, the Federal Government had planned to generate ₦658.55 billion from Companies Income Tax, ₦207.51 billion from Value Added Tax, ₦324.86 billion from Customs while ₦57.87 billion was expected to come from federation account levies.
In the same vein, the government was expected to raise ₦847.95 billion through independent revenue from its agencies, while tax amnesty income, signature bonus and unspent balance from previous years was to provide ₦87.84 billion, ₦114.3 billion and ₦250 billion respectively
Details of the fiscal operations of the Federal Government which were obtained from the economic report of the CBN showed that in the first quarter of 2018, the government recorded about ₦902.64 billion in revenue while its expenditure was put at ₦1.59 trillion.
This resulted into a deficit of ₦697.1 billion for that quarter.
In the second quarter of 2018, the revenue of the Federal Government was put at ₦896.74 billion with expenditure of ₦988.91 billion, resulting into a deficit of ₦92.17 billion.
For the third quarter, the report stated that the government recorded revenue of ₦950.61 billion while it incurred total expenditure of ₦1.05 trillion.
Based on the inability of government’s revenue to meet up with its expenditure, the fiscal deficit was put at ₦100.33 billion.
The report read in part, “Federal Government retained revenue for the third quarter of 2018 was estimated at ₦950.61 billion.
“This was below the proportionate quarterly budget estimate by 49.7 per cent, but exceeded receipts in the review quarter by six per cent.
“Of the total revenue, Federation Account accounted for 86.7 per cent, while Federal Government Independent Revenue, VAT.
Exchange Gain, NNPC Refund and Excess Non-oil accounted for 4.8, 4.2, 3.2, 0.6 and 0.5 per cent, respectively.
“The estimated Federal Government expenditure for the third quarter of 2018 stood at ₦1.05 trillion and was below the proportionate quarterly budget estimate of ₦2.37 trillion by 55.8 per cent.
“It was, however, above the level in the preceding quarter by 6.3 per cent.
“A breakdown of the total expenditure showed that the recurrent component accounted for 82.4 per cent, while capital and statutory transfers accounted for 12.5 and 5.1 per cent, respectively.
“A further breakdown of the recurrent expenditure showed that the non-debt component accounted for 40.9 per cent, while debt service payment was 59.1 per cent.”