Federal Government Spends N47 Billionaire to Service External Debt

The Federal Government spent the sum of $297.33m (N47.57bn) in the 2013 fiscal period to service debts owed multilateral institutions, documents obtained from the Budget Office of the Federation have revealed.

The Budget Office, in its 2013 consolidated budget implementation report jointly signed by the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and the Director-General, BOF, Dr. Bright Okogu, said the amount was used to settle debt obligations to institutions such as multilateral creditors, and non-Paris Club bilateral creditors, among others.

Giving a breakdown of the payments, the report stated that $143.02m (or 48.1 per cent) was paid to multilateral creditors; $40.95m (or 13.77 per cent) was paid to non-Paris Club bilateral creditors; $71.63m (or 24.09 per cent) to commercial and ICM (Eurobond) creditors; and $41.73m (or 14.03 per cent) to others.

The report put the country’s external debt stock as of December 31, 2013 at $8.821bn, indicating an increase of 6.75 per cent over the $8.264bn recorded in the third quarter of the year.

A breakdown of the external debt stock shows that multilateral debts amounted to $6.275bn (or 71.13 per cent), non-Paris Club bilateral debts amounted to $1.025bn (or 11.63 per cent), while commercial (Eurobond) accounted for the balance of $1.521bn (or 17.24 per cent).

The report gave the country’s total public debt stock as of December 31, 2013 at $64.51bn (N10.044tn).

This consists of $8.82bn (N1.37tn) or 13.68 per cent for external debt, and the balance of $55.69bn (N8.67tn) or 86.32 per cent for the domestic debt stock.

The report noted that the total net value of debt/Gross Domestic Product (external and domestic) ratio as of December 2013 was, however, significantly below the global threshold of 40 per cent at 12.52 per cent.

Okonjo-Iweala had during a presentation on the two-year performance of the Ministry of Finance said that $12bn (N1.92tn) funding agreements were sealed by the Federal Government to finance the real sector of the economy.

The amount, according to her, was sourced from financial institutions such as the World Bank, African Development Bank, China Export-Import Bank and Islamic Development Bank at concessionary single digit interest rates and moratorium of about 40 years.

The beneficiary sectors are agriculture (N202bn); environment (N91.2bn); transport (N640bn); water resources (N126.03bn); Niger Delta (N50bn) and health (N30.35bn).

Others are power (N451.12bn); education (N39.97bn); Information and Communication Technology (N16bn) and job creation (N94.4bn).

There are also aviation, housing, Federal Capital Territory and works, where N80bn, N48bn, N80bn and N44.8bn have been secured in that order.

Okonjo-Iweala had while defending the need for the loans explained that the funds were mobilised at concessional rates for the real sector.

She said while some were given to the country at zero interest rates, others were secured at single digit rates with moratorium of 40 years.

source: punch