Victor Ezeja
AdminWorried by the spate of borrowings by various state governments from commercial banks and the capital market, the federal government has come up with guidelines that sub-national authorities must meet before embarking on domestic borrowing.
The Head, Directorate of Legal, Investigation and Enforcement at the Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC), Charles Abana made this known at the Growth Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) parley with Civil Society Partners, in Abuja, on Monday.
He stated that the Commission was shocked to discover that most commercial banks in the country lure state governments into taking loans by promising them irresistible benefits.
“At the commission, we have decided to give them the template and we will go ahead to make sure that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) issues a proper guideline to banks on how to go about getting all the requirements and compliance fulfilled before lending to the states, unlike the past when they just go to the minister and the Debt Management Office (DMO).
“If we don’t put some checks on them, and make it not too easy for them to borrow, I don’t think we will come out of this debt situation. We had a meeting in Lagos with banks to study debt patterns, how do banks give out loans and how they recover it. At the meeting, it was revealed that as soon as state governors constitute their cabinets bank officials swoop on them with mouth-watering offers to lure them into borrowing from the banks,” Abana said.
Speaking on the 2024-2026 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), he pointed out that “the Country’s fiscal deficit (including project tied loans) as a percentage of GDP will keep increasing over the medium term from 3.83 percent, 3.89 percent and 3.92 percent respectively of the projected GDP”.
According to the FRC Legal Head, “Borrowing will increase over the three years while foreign borrowing will increase in the first two years of the medium term.
“The proposed new borrowings are in the sums of N7.808trillion, N8.539trillion and N10.072trillion respectively for the years 2024, 2025 and 2026.”
He recommended that there should be a reduction of overhead capital and the cost of governance so as to make more resources available for developmental capital.
Abana stressed that each of the capital expenditures should have a proper cost benefit analysis open to the public. This is in addition to his recommendation for more public assets to be slated for privatisation so as to increase resources expected from the privatisation exercise while reducing recurrent expenditure.
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