The Federal Government’s total borrowing from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) through Ways and Means Advances, hit ₦20 trillion ($47 billion) as of March 31 2022, according to a report by the Budget Office.
The report, released Saturday, gives details of the country’s expenditure plans from 2023-2025, and also shows that the obligations to the CBN are yet to be added to the nation’s outstanding public debt, which stands at ₦41.6 trillion.
However, even with the additional obligations, the Nigeria remains within the government’s self-imposed limit of 40% debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the report said.
The government plans to securitize its Ways and Means Advances from the CBN and revamp “it into a longer tenor amortizing facility with a lower interest rate,” according to the budget office.
The report further indicates that the country barely earned enough revenues to cover debt service payments in 2021, while in the first four months to April, government income of N1.63 trillion was less than the ₦1.94 trillion needed to cover debt-service payments, Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed said, according to a presentation on the budget office’s website.
