Nigeria’s foreign debt up by 40% under Buhari — NBS

Nigeria’s total domestic and foreign debt stocks as at June 30 stood at about $15.1 billion and N14.1 trillion respectively, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday.

A review of the total foreign debt profile of the Federal and the 36 states governments and the FCT also shows a continuous rise since the coming of the present administration, from $10.718 billion in 2015, to $11.406 billion in 2016 and $15.047 billion in 2017.

Out of the current total figure of $15.047 billion, the Federal Government accounts for $11.106 billion, or about 74 per cent, while the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja owe about $3.94 billion, or 26 per cent.

The Federal and State government shares of the debt stock grew from $7.349 billion and $3.369 billion in 2015, to $7.84 billion and $3.568 billion in 2016, and $3.94 billion and $11.106 billion in 2017 respectively.

The NBS gave further disaggregation of the country’s foreign debt to include $9.67billion as multilateral debt; $218.25million as bilateral (AFD) and $5.15billion from the Exim Bank of China credit to the Federal Government.

Details of the debt figures show that the domestic debts figures of the 36 states of the federation and the FCT have continued to grow since 2015 under the present administration.

From about N2.503 trillion in 2015, the NBS data showed the figure rose to N2.959 trillion in 2016 before reaching the latest point of N3.001 trillion in 2017.

According to the statistics agency, out of the total N14.017 trillion national debt stock, the Federal Government accounts for about N11.058 trillion, or 78.66 per cent, against about N2.959 trillion, or 21.34 per cent by all the states and the FCT.

Further breakdown of the Federal Government domestic debt stock by instruments show that about N7.56 trillion, or 68.41 per cent were in bonds; N3.28 trillion, or 29.64 per cent in treasury bills, while N215.99 million, or 1.95 per cent went into treasury bonds.

Although the NBS did not provide the Federal Government domestic debt figures for 2015, figures obtained from the Debt Management Office, DMO, website on Tuesday showed that total domestic debt by instruments as at December 2015 stood at N8.836 trillion.

This consisted Federal Government bonds N5.808 trillion, or 65.73 per cent; Nigerian treasury bills N2.773 trillion, or 31.38 per cent, and treasury bonds of N255.99 billion, or 2.90 per cent.

Among the 36 states and the FCT, Lagos recorded the highest foreign debt profile, accounting for about 37 per cent of the states’ foreign debts, followed by Kaduna (six per cent), Edo (five percent), Cross River (four percent) and Ogun (three percent).

On the domestic front, Lagos State again took the lead, with the highest domestic debt profile among its colleagues and the FCT, accounting for about 10.39 per cent of the total figure, followed by Delta (8.04 per cent), Awa Ibom (5,18 per cent), FCT (5.09 per cent) and Osun (4.90 per cent).