Nigeria debt stock hits N17trn
Nigeria’s total public debt stock outstanding as at end-December, 2016, was N17,360,009.57 trillion, about $57,391.53 billion, compared to N12,603,705.28 trillion or $65,428.53 million in 2015, the Debts Management Office (DMO) 2016 newly released financial report has shown.
In Naira terms, the total debt stock increased by N4,756,304.30 trillion, representing an increase of 37.74 percent while, in dollar terms, it decreased by $8,037.00 million, representing 12.00 percent, over the same period: the incongruence in the total public debt stock between the two currencies reflects
the difference in the exchange rates for the periods.
The breakdown shows that Nigeria’s external debt accounted for N3,478,915.40 trillion or $11,406.28 million or 20.04 percent, while the domestic debt accounted for N13,881,094.18 trillion or $45,985.25 million or 79.96 percent.
The report said about 83.28 percent of the total external debt, were from concessional and semi-concessional sources and these have relatively longterm maturity.
The domestic debt stock comprised FGN’s debt of N11,058,204.30 trillion, about $36,256.41 million, and the domestic debt of the 36 States and the FCT’s portion of N2,822,889.88 trillion $9,728.84 million as at end-September, 2016, as the collation and validation of the domestic debt data occur with some time lag.
It stated that as at end-December, 2016, the ratio of total public debt-to-GDP was 16.27 percent compared to 13.02 percent in 2015. This was still within the country’s specific limit of 19.39 percent (up to end-2017), and far below the peer group standard threshold of 56.00 percent, as well as WAMZ vonvergence threshold of 70.00 percent, respectively. But owing to drastic drop in revenue, the Debt Service-to- Revenue ratio reached an unsustainable level of 33.94 percent.
Meanwhile, the debt office has said that it plans to use $483.4 million to service its foreign debt over a 10-year period and make repayments starting from next year as its dollar debts begin to mature.