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The Debt Management Office, DMO, on Sunday said the nation’s total debt profile currently stood at $57.39 billion.
Director-General of DMO, Dr. Abraham Nwankwo disclosed this when he appeared before the Senator Shehu Sani’s Committee on Foreign and Local Debts to defend his agency’s budget proposal.
The DG said the total debt stock comprised external and domestic debts of the federal government, those of the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, as at December 31, 2016.
Nwankwo explained that of the total debt stock, external debt stood at $11.41 billion, while domestic debt stock was put at $45.98 billion.
According to him, the 36 states and FCT accounted for about 32.45 percent of the total external debt as at December 31,2016, while the federal government accounted for about 67.55 percent.
He added that the disaggregated external debt stock of the 36 states and FCT as at June 2016 was $3.65 billion, while the disaggregated domestic debt stock of the states and the FCT as at September 2016 was N2,822.89 billion.
Explaining the increase in the debt profile, Nwankwo said: “We observed that the increase was about 6.5 percent and this was as a result of additional disbursement because we don’t disburse a good number of the external loan we take at a go.”
Nwankwo who noted that the domestic debt stock by instruments as at 31st December, 2016 stood at N11,058,204,296,592.00, adding that federal government bonds were N7,564,937,465,592.00; Nigerian Treasury Bills, N3,277,278,831,000.00; and Treasury bonds, N215,988,000,000.00.
When chairman of the committee, Senator Sani asked why the debt profile had not been forgiven, at least with the goodwill of the present government, the DMO boss said Nigeria would not beg for debt forgiveness, since the economy was in good shape.
Senator Sani, who was apparently not comfortable with the position of the DMO Director- General, said: “It is shocking that in 2016, people don’t find it easy to feed their families, pay the fees of their children, pay their rents.
‘’Now things are in very bad shape, but not typical of somebody who lives with the people, but somebody speaking from an expert point of view to say we are not in a bad position to ask for forgiveness.
‘’These are two things, if you are talking from the point of how our people live nowadays, you will not be able to say such things. But you are speaking naturally as an expert.
‘’Our most concern is the fact that most of the states simply collect money, piled up so many debts for their children and grandchildren and there is nothing to show for it. Many of them couldn’t pay salaries and we have seen how some new sets of cash disbursement were done to them from excess crude account to ecological funds.”