Economy
ECA now $324m, $107bn withdrawn between 2004 and 2018 – Budgit

Nigeria’s civic tech organisation, Budgit has revealed that a total $107 billion (about N32.8 trillion) was withdrawn from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) between January 2014 and April 2019.
Budgit which made the disclosure in a release via twitter on Wednesday, said the account as at October 2019, stood at $324 million.
The organisation posted: “A short story of Excess Crude Account BALANCE
June 2007: $9.43b
Jan. 2009: $20b
Jan. 2011: $4.56b
Dec. 2012: $8.65b
Nov. 2013: $4.3b
Dec. 2014: $2.45b
May 2015: $2.07b
April 2016: $2.26b
Dec. 2018: $631m
Oct. 2019: $324m
$107bn was withdrawn from ECA from Jan. 2004 to Apr. 2018”
The ECA holds foreign reserves from excess earnings from sales of crude and has been subject of controversies.
In a report a few months ago, the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) ranked it as the most poorly governed among similar funds operated by resource-rich countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Similarly, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in April declared that the ECA was not achieving the goals for which it was set up.
IMF’s Director of the African Department (AFR), Abebe Selassie, who made the observation during a media briefing on “Regional Economic Outlook: sub-Saharan Africa”, had noted that, “The concern that we have is about the ECA, because if you recall that the ECA economically was set up to save resources when oil prices are high, and to be drawn on when oil prices are low. We do not think that the ECA has been doing effectively enough jobs that way.
“Because you see, when oil prices fell, the economy was very hard in the last couple of years, we feel like much better job could have been done, saving enough more in the ECA when oil prices were at $100 and $120 per barrel.”