New Telegraph

Debt Servicing: Nigeria paid $156.29m to China, others in Q1

The Federal Government spent a total sum of $156.29million on servicing the debts owed to the Exim Bank of China, the World Bank and other International Financial Institutions (IFIs), in the first quarter of this year, latest data released by the Debt Management Office (DMO) shows.

 

According to the actual external debt service payments data for January –March 2022, published by the DMO last week, the country spent the sum of $67.91million servicing its bilateral debt during the period with $66.90million of the amount going to the Exim Bank of China.

 

Similarly, the data shows  that the Federal Government spent the sum of $88.38million to service multilateral debt during the period under review, with payments to the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), amounting to $45.24million.

 

This means that the nation spent the total sum of $156.29million to service its bilateral and multilateral debts in the first three months of this year.

 

New Telegraph’s analysis of the multilateral debts data further indicates that the country paid the sums of $36.59million and $2.04millionto service its debt to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), respectively.

In addition, during the period, the government paid $4.41million to service the country’s debt to the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and $90,879.09 to the European Development Fund (EDF).

 

Further analysis of the DMO’s data on Nigeria’s outstanding external debt stock as at March 31 2022, shows that multilateral debt stood at $18.96billion, accounting for 47.43 per cent of the country’s external debt stock.

 

Specifically, the data indicates that Nigeria owes the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and agencies under the World Bank, the sums of $3.40billion and $12.72.billion respectively.

 

According to the DMO, the country’s debt to other Multilateral Development institutions, such as the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, the African Development Fund, Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa, IFAD, the EDF and the Islamic Development Bank, amounted to $2.85billion. The DMO also stated that Nigeria’s bilateral and commercial debt as at March 31 2022, stood at $4.50billion and $15.92billion respectively.

 

New Telegraph reports that in its latest numbers released last week, the DMO said that the country’s total public debt stock, comprising the debt obligations of the Federal Government, states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) increased from N39.56 trillion in December 2021 to N41.60 trillion ($100.07 billion) in the first three months of 2022 (January to March).

 

The DMO noted that with the increase in the nation’s debt profile, its total public debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) now stands at 23.27 per cent, compared with 22.43 per cent as of December 31, 2021.

The agency, which said that the total public debt stock, included new domestic borrowing by the Federal Government to partly finance the deficit in the 2022 Appropriation Act, the $1.25 billion Eurobond issued in March 2022 and disbursements by multilateral and bilateral lenders, put domestic debt service at N668.69billion in the first quarter of this year representing a 9.0 percent rise when compared to N612.7 billion spent in Q1’21.

 

The DMO also shows that N228 billion ($548.78 million) was expended on servicing of external debt during the period, representing a 44 per cent decline from N410.1 billion spent in the corresponding period of last year.

At their Spring Meeting in 2019, the World Bank and the IMF had expressed concern about the rising influence of lending by China to developing nations. They called for more transparency about loan amounts and terms, and cautioned governments in developing nations against relying too much on debt

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