FG to engage consultants to manage revenue from solid minerals

In an effort to diversify the nation’s revenue profile, the National Economic Council (NEC) on Tuesday endorsed a plan to increase the contribution of the solid minerals sector to the nation’s treasury.

Following a presentation to the Council by the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the state governors as members of the council also approved the appointment of professional revenue consultants to achieve this goal.

NEC also supported a presentation from the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola on the Ministry’s strategy to generate incremental power as a short term measure towards addressing current energy shortage in the country.

Mr Fayemi presented a Memorandum to Council on the need to engage Independent Professional Revenue Consultants to increase the contribution of the Solid Minerals Sector to the revenue of the Government of the Federation.

According to minutes of the council’s meeting made available to newsmen, the “imperative of the memo arose after a comprehensive review of the revenue generation profile of the mining sector and the need to plug avoidable revenue leakages, which occur due to the inadequacies inherent in the existing revenue collection systems.

“NEITI estimated total revenue from the mining sector at N31.449 billion and N50.2 billion in 2012 and 2013 respectively out of which only N1.9 billion and N2.01 billion respectively were remitted as Royalties to the FG.  In addition, there were no records of royalty payment of as much as estimated billions of Naira worth from Gold, Precious Stone, Barites and other exported solid minerals.

“Council therefore approved the engagement of Independent Professional Revenue Consultant to increase the contribution of Solid Minerals sector to the FG, but with the condition that the Ministry should negotiate a threshold with the Consultants on their professional consultation fees.”

Read also: We’ll achieve 7,000MW of power generation by 2017, Osinbajo vows

On power supply, the NEC noted that “government’s plan is to deliver incremental, stable, and then uninterrupted power to homes and businesses in stages”.

According to the council, “One problem with the power sector is that, there is not enough power to go round.  So government will systematically and decisively deal with the immediate task to harness incremental power from all available sources.

“DISCOS were authorised in February this year, to partner with private industry that had idle generation capacity from its captive power station, to add 400 MW of embedded generation that would otherwise have been unused or underutilized.”

The council also recommended that Fashola organise a forum where DISCOS, GENCOS, NERC and State Governments will interact to create common awareness of the challenges in the power sector.

During the meeting, the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun reported that the balance of the ECA for the month of October 2016 stood at $2.4 billion, and that disbursement of the Budget Support facility is still ongoing to 35 States.

 

 

 

 

 

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