From now till December 31, 2019, Nigeria will raise its domestic debt profile by N802. 82 billion to support the 2019 budget implementation which would elapse in barely 64 days, the Debt Management Office (DMO) has said.
On the other hand, it would shelve planned borrowing from the international debt market- Eurobond, for the budget, since 2019 appropriation had turned out to be a six-month fiscal operation.
With the presentation of the 2020 budget proposals and the pledge by the lawmakers to give the document accelerated approval by mid-December, the 2019 budget signed five months ago would end.
The Director-General of DMO, Patience Oniha, who made the disclosures, said there were time constraints before the end of the 2019 budget cycle, as the Federal Government wants to start its budget implementation for 2020 in January.
The 2019 budget plans had included foreign borrowing at N824.82 billion ($2.7 billion) and domestic borrowing of N802.82 billion.
“We will only raise the new domestic borrowing of N802.82 billion naira as provided in the 2019 Appropriation Act. We won’t be in the international capital market in 2019,” she said.
The DMO, had in June, said government wanted to first access cheap funding from multilateral and bilateral lenders and then, raise any balance from commercial sources, possibly through security issuances such as Eurobonds.
President Muhammadu Buhari, earlier this month, presented a record N10.33 trillion ($33.8 billion) budget for 2020 to the National Assembly, which he expects to be partly financed by foreign and domestic borrowings, as well as proceeds of privatisation.
The proposal represents an 11 per cent increase when compared to the 2019 appropriation of N9.12 trillion, with retained earnings estimated at N8.155 trillion, leaving a deficit of N2.18 trillion, which represents 1.52 per cent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
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