http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/01/nnpc-borrows-from-10-banks-to-clear-3-5bn-foreign-debts/

ABUJA — THE Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, is borrowing from at least 10 banks and using revenue from oil production to help clear a long-overdue $3.5 billion debt owed to foreign fuel traders.

Fuel subsidy payments totalling N94 billion have been verified for 23 marketers and “will be paid in the next few days.”

The Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, confirmed this, yesterday, in a statement issued by her Special Adviser, Mr. Paul C Nwabuikwu.

This came as the Senate denied, yesterday, that it approved the NNPC loan, saying it had nothing to do with it.

Chairman, Senate Committee on Media, Information, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, noted that it never at any time authorised NNPC to borrow any money, adding: “Under the law, no government agency can borrow money without the approval of the National Assembly.

We have to know before it was done first; but then the question to ask under the circumstance is: what happened to the N161 billion supplementary appropriation approved by the National Assembly for government to take care of the shortfall in the fuel subsidy budget, particularly to ensure steady supply of petroleum product during the yuletide?”

The banking source told Reuters that the foreign banks providing funds include France’s BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered, Natixis, multilateral lender Afrexim Bank, a local unit of Standard Bank and Korea’s MMC,

while the Nigerian banks were United Bank for Africa, Ecobank, FirstBank and Union Bank.

The last ditch deal is seen as crucial to easing the burden on big commodity traders facing the prospect of painful multi-million dollar write-offs on those bills and saving Nigeria from defaulting on the loans, which would have worried credit agencies that recently upgraded the country.

According to the source, “the management of the NNPC took the last-minute decision to salvage our credit rating as the Ministry of Finance has not been forthcoming for months with payments to our major international suppliers like Glencore, Trafigura, Vitol and others who have been facing the painful prospect of writing off millions of dollars owed them as bad debts.


“If this had happened, our ability to access foreign loans as a country would have been impossible and, believe me, credit rating agencies, which upgraded us recently, would have downgraded or even blacklisted us as serial defaulters.

“It was our only option and it was purely a commercial decision and I don’t think we require the National Assembly’s approval to go ahead with it.”




It was purely a management decision to ensure steady supply of petrol and to save our face amongst our foreign partners,” the source, who asked not to be named in this report, said.

The NNPC pledged 15, 000 barrels of crude per day as collateral with an agreement to pay the loan back in five and a half years

http://www.punchng.com/business/business-economy/china-emerges-nigerias-top-creditor-with-n1tn-loan/

With over $6.2bn credit facilities to Nigeria, the People’s Republic of China has emerged as the country’s highest creditor, investigations have shown.

Although the Debt Management Office listed on its website the nation’s total external debt as at September 30, 2012 as $6.29bn, investigations showed that the country’s indebtedness to China alone stood at over $6.2bn.

This means that most of the country’s debts to China have not been officially captured in the DMO database.

This is because most of the debts were sealed recently by the Federal Government, while the drawdown on some of the recent has yet to begin.

The DMO put Nigeria’s bilateral and commercial loans as of September 30, 2012, under which category the Chinese loans fall, at a paltry $679.22m, but the Chinese loans to the country exceed the amount by over 1,000 per cent.

Some of the earliest loans obtained by the Federal Government from China included $200m for the rural telephony project and another $200m for the Nigeria Communications Satellite project.

The most recent ones include $500m for the Abuja Light Rail project; $500m for four airport terminals; $100m for the Galaxy Backbone network expansion; $1.04bn for the Zungeru Hydropower project, $2.56bn for the Mambila Hydropower project; $1bn for the modernisation of the Lagos-Kano rail project; and $100m for expansion of connectivity in the MDAs.

http://leadership.ng/nga/articles/44499/2013/01/09/corruption_under_jonathan_too_much_obasanjo.html


Former president Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday said the current level of corruption in Nigeria is assuming an unimaginable proportion and mind-boggling.

In another development, the inspector-general of police, Mohammed Abubakar, has blamed the craze for the nation’s oil wealth for the current insecurity in the country.