Kayode ShopekanNIGERIA’S Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed has said our borrowing is within healthy limit when compared with other countries.
According to her, our revenue has increased but they are not enough, we need to borrow to carry out capital projects.
Zainab Ahmed observed that “though our revenues have increased over time but we cannot solely depend on it for operational expenditure of the government, including salaries and other overheads.
The Finance Minister explained that ” our administration’s heavy reliance on loans is within healthy limits even with plans to borrow to more in order to finance the N6.258 trillion deficit in the proposed 2022 budget.
She insisted that government will continue to borrow because it is in the interest of the nation.
“Government has been borrowing before this administration and continues to borrow, and it is important that we borrow to provide developmental projects in the form of roads, rails, bridges, power, and water for sustainable development in this country,”
Recall that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) already approved N16.39 trillion for the 2022 Appropriation.
Ms Ahmed justified the borrowings arguing that Nigeria’s total borrowing which stands at 23% of the GDP is very low when compared to that of other countries.
“As of July 2021, the total borrowing is 23% of GDP. When you compare our borrowing to other countries, we’re the lowest within the region, lowest compared to Egypt, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, the very lowest, and Angola,” she argued.
However, she admitted, “We do have a problem with revenue. Our revenues have been increasing. We just reported to the council that our revenues from non-oil have performed, as of July, at the rate of 111 per cent, which means outperforming the prorated budget.”
A report by the Nigerian Domestic and Foreign Debt Report, published this year by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), estimated that the country’s total public debt as of September 2020 was N32.2 trillion ($84.57 billion).
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