Nigeria Can’t Stop Borrowing – Finance Minister | CABLE REPORTERS



Amid growing concerns over Nigeria’s debt profile, the Minister of Finance, Budget and Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, has said the dual reality of COVID-19 pandemic and the drop in the price of oil in the international market has made it inevitable for Nigeria to keep borrowing from external bodies.



She stated that before the global health and economic challenges, Nigeria had been grappling with low revenue, noting that the crises had put the country in a difficult situation, which had made it difficult for the government to meet some of its obligations.
As of March, the Vice Chairman, Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts, Senator Muhammad Enagi, said the country’s total debt would have risen to about N33tn after the Senate approved the President’s request to take another $22.7bn foreign loan.

But, Ahmed said, “We’ve had to grapple with low revenue, even before the pandemic. We had high debt, weak infrastructure base, low human capital and low revenue that is largely dependent on the foreign exchange earned from oil. So, there are many things we have loved to do that we cannot do.

“Due to the global economic slowdown and the revenue issues, what we are expecting is a GDP that would contract, in the best case scenario, by about 4.4 per cent,, and in the worst-case scenario, it could be about eight percent or more.

“We are in a very difficult situation but we are trying to manage that because if nothing is done, up to about 21 million jobs could also be affected by the impact of the pandemic. So, with all these statistics, we cannot overemphasize the importance of raising revenue.”

  CABLE REPORTERS

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