By Tony Akowe, Abuja

The Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) has begun the review of remuneration packages of public officers, its Chairman,c, has said.

Speaking when he appeared before the House Committee on Finance, he said the commission has started reviewing the existing revenue allocation formula.

He said paucity of funds delayed the completion of the two reviews.

According to him, preliminary work, including literature review, engagement with the major  stakeholders, and collection of relevant data, has begun.

He said the agency has recovered about N75 billion from its monitoring, verification and reconciliation exercises on revenue collections and remittances by commercial banks, companies and the agencies that collect/remit revenue to the Federation Account.

“The verification, which took effect from 2008 is still ongoing and was reported to the stakeholders through the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) and the National Economic Council (NEC).

“Sequel to the submission of an interim report on the verification exercise and because of the tremendous result in terms of revenue recovery, NEC approved that the exercise is extended to 2019.

“As at date, over N75 Billion has been recovered by the Commission. Furthermore, a sum of over N474million was recovered in the ongoing recovery exercise by the Custom Monitoring Committee of RMAFC Recovery from the three tiers and agencies of governments,” he said.

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Mbam said until recently, stamp duty was not contributing any revenue to the federation account, adding that with the intervention of the Commission, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was directed by the Federal Government to mandate Deposit Money Banks (Commercial Banks) to commence the deduction of N50 stamp duties on all deposits and withdrawals of N1,000.

He maintained that through the efforts of the Commission, an account for the solid minerals sector was opened with the CBN, where proceeds from the sector were being paid into.

“It is important to note that before the intervention of the Commission, the Solid Minerals Sector never contributed to the Federation Account.

“So far, over N31 billion has accrued into the account, out of which over N27 billion has been disbursed to the three tiers of government, including the 13 per cent derivation in which all the 36 states benefited.

“The outstanding balance of about N4billion is awaiting relevant data from the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development for distribution to the 3-tiers of Government,” Mbam said.