Revenue from rail drops by 60% as passenger traffic plunges to .5m in Q1

The federal government has seen revenue from rail service dropped to N768.4m in quarter one 2023, lower by 63.02 per cent relative to N2.08bn received in the same quarter of the previous year, a  report by the National Bureau of Statistics has shown.

The number of passengers that used rail services in the first quarter also  dropped to 441,725 from 953,099 that used it during the same period in 2022.

The report, titled ‘Rail Transportation Data (Q1 2023)’, stated that the drop represented a growth rate of -3.65.

Daily Trust reports that the drop of passengers may be connected to the terrorist attack on the Abuja-Kaduna train station in March 2022 which led to the kidnapping of over 60 passengers with the death of at least nine persons.

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This led to the suspension of train services along the corridor, which resumed in December 2022 but with a reduced capacity.

It said, “59,966 tons of goods were transported in Q1 2023, compared to 39,379 tons reported in Q1 2022. Similarly, N181.27m was collected in Q1 2023 as revenue from goods/cargos, up by 99.28 per cent from N90.96m received in Q1 2022. In addition, other receipts amounted to N34.17m, indicating a decline of 41.02 per cent in Q1 2023, from N57.9m collected in Q1 2022.

Meanwhile, the NBS in another report stated that the federal government generated N1.17tr from Value Added Tax (VAT) and Company Income Tax (VIT) in the first quarter of 2023.

A breakdown showed that N709.5bn was generated from VAT, which was a 1.75 per cent growth on a quarter-on-quarter basis from N697.38 billion in Q4 2022, while N469bn was generated from CIT, indicating a growth rate of -37.79 per cent on a quarter-on-quarter basis from N753.8bn generated in Q4 2022.

“Local payments recorded were N436.1bn, Foreign VAT Payments N151.1bn, while import VAT contributed N122.3bn in Q1 2023.

“In terms of sectoral contributions, the top three largest shares in Q1 2023 were manufacturing with N129.3bn (29.65 per cent); information and communication with N84.1bn (19.29 per cent); and mining & quarrying with N53.3bn (12.24 per cent).

For CIT, it stated that local payments received were to the tune of N300.7bn while foreign CIT payment contributed N168.23bn in Q1 2023.

However, on a year-on-year basis, CIT collections in Q1 2023 decreased by 14.96% from Q1 2022.