Nigeria’s total debt profile has climbed above N50trillion
The disclosure last week at the Lagos Business Schools (LBS) during the breakfast meeting organized by the Financial Derivative Company (FDC). It’s Chief Executive Officer, Bismack Rewane, observed that the Federal Government’s ways & means has climbed by 595.5% to N15.51trillion in five years.
This is because if you added the debts arising from the Central Bank’s ways and means to the about N34.7tn debts declared recently by the Debt Management Office (DMO) it all comes down to above N50trillion.
Also, the FDC revealed that the poverty level in Nigeria is not moderating and that Nigeria is still the poverty capital of the world,saying that those living under poverty in Nigeria has jumped from the former 83mn to 93.9mn people.
According to the Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed speaking in a Bloomberg TV interview maintained that the FG is going for more loans
She said the government has approval to raise $6.1 billion from overseas, “so we are looking at doing half of that in the Eurobond market and the other half from bilateral and multilateral sources.”
The government is working to reduce its debt-service burden by increasing revenue, restructuring its debt portfolio through the conversion of expensive short-term notes into longer tenors and also reducing its overall borrowing, Ahmed said.
According to Bloomberg proceeds from the sale — the first international sale since 2018 — will help the oil-dependent economy finance projects planned in the 2021 budget and shore up its foreign-exchange reserves, which has come under pressure from lower oil prices and production.
The government expects a 2021 budget deficit of 5.60 trillion naira to be financed largely from foreign and local borrowings.
The Federal Government last month appointed JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Global Markets, Standard Chartered Bank and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as international bookrunners and joint lead managers for the Eurobond offering.
