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Kwara Approves Proposal to Offset Local Debt with Pending FG’s Excess Crude Accounts’ Deductions
Hammed Shittu in Ilorin
The Kwara State Executive Council has granted approval for the state government to offset its local debt stock with the outstanding payments of its share of the federal government’s unauthorised deductions from Excess Crude Accounts (ECA) between 2009 and 2015.
The Nigerian Governors’ Forum is proposing that each state should offset its debt to the federal government from its share of the ECA.
However, the Kwara State Commissioner for Finance, Mrs. Florence Oyeyemi, in a memo she presented to the executive council yesterday urged the council to authorise the federal government to settle and defray the state government’s domestic debt to it from the outstanding balance of 60 per cent due to the state from the refunds on the unauthorised debits in the ECA, Petroleum Profit Tax and Royalties Account.
The memo said the balance of the debits, if any, would be credited/remitted to the state government’s account by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning and “where the 60 per cent cannot defray all the state government’s domestic debt to the federal government, the Federal Ministry of Finance will continue the deduction directly from the FAAC Share of the state government as being done before.”
The council approval would be transmitted to the House of Assembly for legislative consent.
The council meanwhile has also approved the commencement of the Islamic Development Bank-funded Special Agro Processing Zone (SAPZ) with payment of the counterparts funding for the project, which would strengthen food security, create thousands of jobs, promote infrastructural development, and lessen the perennial clashes between farmers and herders.
The council also approved the continuation of the KwaraLEARN, a project the state governor said has enabled the government to improve basic education as well as take control of the sector through technology and real-time data of the pupils, teachers and their performances.
