Bayelsa Government has described as incorrect Federal Government’s categorisation of the state as insolvent due to its low internally generated revenue profile.
It also restated its call for restructuring of the country to address the current lopsided federalism that denied states, particularly Bayelsa, the due revenue from the resources in their land and region.
Chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), Mr. Elias Mbam, while receiving receiving the Annual States Viability Index (ASVI) from the Editor-in-Chief of the Economic Confidential in his office in Abuja on Monday, stated that Bayelsa, Borno, Katsina, Kebbi and Taraba states had become insolvent because of their “extremely poor IGR” performance in 2019.
Faulting the report and the federal government’s position, the Technical Adviser to the Bayelsa State Governor on Treasury, Accounts and Revenue, Mr. Timipre Seipulou, said the state was not financially insolvent.
Mr. Seipulou stated this in Yenagoa while presenting the income and expenditure profile of the state for the months of May, June and July 2020.
A statement by the governor’s Acting Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Daniel Alabrah, quoted him as saying that the actual problem was in the lopsided nature of the country’s funding structure.
He contended that the federal government allocates 54% of federal revenue to itself leaving the states with a little over 20% to share among themselves.
He also pointed out that a lot of monetary and fiscal policies were being driven by the federal government at the detriment of the states.
He expressed regret that Bayelsa with its vast deposits of oil and gas does not benefit from taxes and other revenues accruing from such resources to shore up its internally generated revenue based on the lopsided federal system the country operates.
Seipulou therefore called for restructuring of the country, saying “even on the issue of payment of taxes, we have been fighting that oil companies operating in the Niger Delta pay taxes to the states in the region. Only last week, we had a lot of meetings over the issue of Federal Inland Revenue Service collecting taxes that should go to the states. And we had to go to court over that issue.