Nigeria’s public debt as at end-December 2020 totaled N32.915 trillion (Ghs 497 billion).
This was disclosed by Nigeria’s Debt Management Office (DMO) – the federal agency established to coordinate the management of Nigeria’s debt.
According to the federal agency, the debt sum includes the debt stock of the federal and state governments as well as the federal capital territory.
Debt figures released by the DMO is in consonance with earlier data released by Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in September 2020 when the Federal government’s total public debt stock stood at N32.22 trillion (Ghs 492.5 billion).
Representing a year-on-year increment of some N6.01 trillion (Ghs 91.7 billion) when compared to the N26.21 trillion (Ghs 400.7 billion) recorded in September 2019.
A breakdown of the composition of Nigeria’s public debt stock as contained in the Nigerian Domestic and Foreign Debt Report for 2020, reveal external debts accounted for 37.82 per cent (Ghs 186.3 billion) of the total debt stock with domestic debt accounting for 62.18 per cent (Ghs 306.3 billion).
On December 31, 2020, President Buhari signed the 2021 appropriation bill of N13.59 trillion (Ghs 207.7 billion) into law, which was 25.7% higher than the revised 2020 budget of N10.8 trillion (Ghs 165 billion). However, the budget comes with a deficit of N5.6 trillion (Ghs 82.7 billion), which is expected to be financed mainly through borrowings both externally and domestically.
Meanwhile, Nigeria has been advised by local think tank, Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) to consider undertaking some debt relief programmes in order to drive down its debts to sustainable levels.
NESG, in its Macroeconomic Outlook of the Nigerian Economy for 2021, suggested that the continent’s biggest economy approach multilateral creditors such as the IMF and World Bank for debt reliefs.
“Nigeria needs to approach multinational creditors like International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and others with a proposal for “Debt Servicing Relief”. This will help ease the country’s shrinking revenue potentials and reduce the fiscal deficit,” said NESG.
In addition to requesting for debt service relief, NESG noted that Nigeria needs to concentrate on alternative and non-debt sources for budget deficit financing.
“There is a need to consider adopting non-traditional financing mode, especially for infrastructure development. The institutionalisation of Private Public Partnership (PPP) model and the use of non-interest financing models, should be considered. These financing models are cheap, cost-effective and can help improve transparency in public procurement,” added NESG.
