PDP berates Buhari, APC over $81bn debt burden, additional $2.5bn World Bank loan

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has berated President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) on the increasing debt burden and the desire for more loans to add to the existing debt burden. The PDP adopting a social media commentary to decried that – #Buhari/APC will kill this country, it is only God that can stop them, the judiciary is now toothless same with National Assembly #the rubber stamp NASS will approve this loan again#.

It was noted that Nigeria and the World Bank have begun talks for a loan of $2.5 billion in a new tranche of concessionary lending by the multilateral financial institution.

In the past year, Nigeria received $2.4 billion from the World Bank, World Bank’s Vice President for Africa Region, Mr. Hafez Ghanem, was said to have told Bloomberg in an interview.

It was decried that if the World Bank grants Nigeria the loan, it would shoot up the country’s debt burden to over $83 billion mark.

Ghanem was cited to have admitted: “We’re talking about a new set of programmes of about the same amount; it should be around $2.5 billion.”

It was lamented that data from the Debt Management Office (DMO)  indicated that Nigeria’s total public debt, including the federal government, states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) stood at N24.947 trillion or $81.274 billion as at March 31, 2019.

The figures was said to have indicated that the external debt also increased by N101.646 billion in three months.

The PDP observed that Nigeria, during the Jonathan administration, vies with South Africa for Africa’s biggest economy, but the country is makes a sluggish recovery since a 2016 recession, with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) expanding only 1.9 per cent in the three months through June, slowing for the third consecutive quarter.