Nigeria’s Public Debt Stock Hits N42trn

Nigeria’s total public debt stock, which was N41.60trillion ($100.07billion) in March rose to N42.84trillion ($103.31billion) by June.
This is contained in a statement obtained from Debt Management Office’s website, yesterday.
According to the statement, 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).
It, however, said that while the foreign component of the debt remained at the same level of N16.61trillion ($39.96billion), the local component increased to N26.23trillion ($63.24billion).
The local component of the country’s borrowings was N24,98trillion ($60.1billion) as of March 30.
The DMO said that a larger percentage of the external debts were concessional and semi-concessional loans.
“Over 58per 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 N24,98trillion ($60.1billion) in March to N26.23trillion ($63.24billion) 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 said.
It said that the total public Debt-to-GDP ratio remained within limits, at 23.06per cent, while Debt-Service-to-Revenue was still high.
It added that the federal government was committed to increasing revenue to reduce the amount that went into debt servicing.
“The Debt-to-GDP as of June 30, was 23.06per cent compared to the ratio of 23.27 as of March 30. It remains within Nigeria’s self-imposed limit of 40per 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,” it said.
Meanwhile, the DMO is set to take its FGN Securities Awareness Programme to Yola on Wednesday and Umuahia on September 29.
According to the DMO’s Director-General, Patience Oniha, the programme is designed to sensitise Nigerians on the huge investment benefits in FGN securities, thereby boosting financial inclusion.