Excess crude account falls by 89% to $472,513

Nigeria’s excess crude account has declined by 89 per cent in the last eight years, moving from $4.1bn in November 2014 to $472,513 in the same period of 2022.

According to a statement by the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning on Wednesday, the ECA’s balance as of November 23, 2022, stood at $472,513.64.

The ECA is the Federal Government’s fiscal account that was created to save revenues—in excess of the budgetary benchmark price—that were generated from oil sales, according to Investopedia, an investment and business dictionary.

The account, however, has depleted in the last eight years owing to lack of inflows, oil market vagaries and the country’s revenue crunch, according to economists.

A Professor of Economics at Covenant University, Ogun State, Jonathan Aremu, in an interview with The Punch, said, “It is a simple fact that when you spend money from an account and you are not adding to it, it will deplete .

“For you to increase the ECA, the oil price must rise above the budgeted price. If it does not, nothing goes in. Also, if what you are spending is higher than what goes in, it depletes. This is the situation.”