Nigeria’s public debt rises to N42trn

The Debt Management Office (DMO) on Tuesday revealed that Nigeria’s total public debt stock, which was N41.60 trillion (100.07 billion dollars) in March has risen to N42.84 trillion (103.31 billion dollars) as oJune 2022.

A statement on the DMO website cited on Tuesday indicated that the total debt represents the domestic and external debt stocks of the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN), the 36 State Governments and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The DMO highlighted that while the foreign component of the debt remained at the same level of N16.61 trillion (39.96 billion dollars), the local component increased to N26.23 trillion (63.24 billion dollars).

The local component of Nigeria’s borrowings was N24,98 trillion (60.1billion dollars) on March 30, 2022.

The DMO noted that a larger percentage of the external debts were concessional and semi-concessional loans.

According to the DMO: “Over 58 per cent of the external debt stock are concessional and semi-concessional loans.

“They were obtained from multilateral lenders such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Afrexim and African Development Bank, and bilateral lenders including Germany, China, Japan, India and France.

“The total domestic debt stock increased from N24,98 trillion (60.1billion dollars) in March to N26.23 trillion (63.24 billion dollars) in June.

“This is due to new borrowings by the FGN to part-finance the deficit in the 2022 Appropriation (Repeal and Enactment) Act, as well as new borrowings by state governments and the FCT.”

The DMO maintained that the total public Debt-to-GDP ratio remained within limits, at 23.06 per cent, while Debt-Service-to-Revenue was still high.

The DMO stated: “The Debt-to-GDP as at June 30, was 23.06 per cent compared to the ratio of 23.27 as at March 30. It remains within Nigeria’s self-imposed limit of 40 per cent.

“While the Federal Government continues to implement revenue-generating initiatives in the non-oil sector and block leakages in the oil sector, Debt Service-to-Revenue ratio remains high.”

The Director-General of the DMO, Patience Oniha, disclosed that the Office will take the FGN Securities Awareness Programme to Yola on Wednesday and Umuahia on September 29. She explained that the programme is designed to sensitise Nigerians on the huge investment benefits in FGN securities, thereby boosting financial inclusion.