Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to provide spending details of the overdrafts and loans obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) by the Federal Government since May 29, 2015, as well as the projects on which the overdrafts had been spent; repayment of all overdrafts to date.
Currently the level of borrowing from the CBN is reported over $20 billion external debt, and N7 trillion domestic debt.
Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that the rising debt service is an economic threat to the country. “Rising debt service is a threat. Total public debt has increased from N5.24 trillion in 2010 to over N32 trillion in 2020. Moving towards improved sustainability may require future debt tied to revenue-generating projects” said Afolabi Olowookere, Head of Economic Research and Policy Management in the Office of the Chief Economist, SEC.
Minister of Finance and Budget Planning, Zainab Ahmed, insisted, however, that Nigeria would need to borrow more to finance its 2021 budget to provide infrastructure.According to the 2020 report by Moody Investors Service, Nigeria would need at least $3 trillion over 30 years to reduce its infrastructure deficit. However, this 2021 budget has a total aggregate capital expenditure of N4.37 trillion amounting to 32.2 percent of the total expenditure and an overall deficit of N5.6 trillion to be financed almost equally from domestic and foreign sources.
