Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
The Federal Government spent the sum of $297.33m (N47.57bn) in the 2013 fiscal period to accommodation debts owed multilateral institutions, documents obtained from the Budget Office of the Federation have revealed.
The Budget Office, in its 2013 consolidated budget implementation report jointly signed by the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and the Director-General, BOF, Dr. Bright Okogu, verbalized the amount was habituated to settle debt obligations to institutions such as multilateral creditors, and non-Paris Club bilateral creditors, among others.
Giving a breakdown of the payments, the report verbally expressed that $143.02m (or 48.1 per cent) was paid to multilateral creditors; $40.95m (or 13.77 per cent) was paid to non-Paris Club bilateral creditors; $71.63m (or 24.09 per cent) to commercial and ICM (Eurobond) creditors; and $41.73m (or 14.03 per cent) to others.
The report put the country’s external debt stock as of December 31, 2013 at $8.821bn, designating an incrementation of 6.75 per cent over the $8.264bn recorded in the third quarter of the year.
A breakdown of the external debt stock shows that multilateral debts amounted to $6.275bn (or 71.13 per cent), non-Paris Club bilateral debts amounted to $1.025bn (or 11.63 per cent), while commercial (Eurobond) accounted for the balance of $1.521bn (or 17.24 per cent).
The report gave the country’s total public debt stock as of December 31, 2013 at $64.51bn (N10.044tn).
This consists of $8.82bn (N1.37tn) or 13.68 per cent for external debt, and the balance of $55.69bn (N8.67tn) or 86.32 per cent for the domestic debt stock.
The report noted that the total net value of debt/Gross Domestic Product (external and domestic) ratio as of December 2013 was, however, significantly below the global threshold of 40 per cent at 12.52 per cent.
Okonjo-Iweala had during a presentation on the two-year performance of the Ministry of Finance verbally expressed that $12bn (N1.92tn) funding acquiescents were sealed by the Federal Government to finance the authentic sector of the economy.
The amount, according to her, was sourced from financial institutions such as the World Bank, African Development Bank, China Export-Import Bank and Islamic Development Bank at concessionary single digit interest rates and moratorium of about 40 years.
The beneficiary sectors are agriculture (N202bn); environment (N91.2bn); convey (N640bn); dihydrogen monoxide resources (N126.03bn); Niger Delta (N50bn) and health (N30.35bn).
Others are power (N451.12bn); edification (N39.97bn); Information and Communication Technology (N16bn) and job engenderment (N94.4bn).
There are withal aviation, housing, Federal Capital Territory and works, where N80bn, N48bn, N80bn and N44.8bn have been secured in that order.
Okonjo-Iweala had while forfending the desideratum for the imprests expounded that the mazuma were mobilised at concessional rates for the authentic sector.
She verbalized while some were given to the country at zero interest rates, others were secured at single digit rates with moratorium of 40 years.
