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Nigeria Owes $6.67 Billion External Debt,says Okonjo-iweala - Investment - Nairaland

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Nigeria Owes $6.67 Billion External Debt,says Okonjo-iweala by Elijah348(m): 1:20am On Jun 09, 2013
The Coordinating Minister for the Economy
and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-
Iweala, yesterday, put the nation's external
debt at $6.67 billion, (about N1.035 trillion).
Nigeria spent $8.0429 billion to service
debt in 2006 and $10. 1072 billion in 2005 before the debt relief of 2006. However, the Minister said that
the clarification became
necessary in view of the various figures being quoted in the debate over the
nation's indebtedness. Her words, "as at now, our external
indebtedness is as low as $6.67 billion or about
3 percent of Gross Domestic Product, GDP." According to her, "the external debt is typically
owed to foreign creditors such as multilateral
agencies [like the Africa Development Bank,
World Bank, the Islamic Development Bank], as
well as other bilateral sources [including the
China Exim Bank, the French Development Bank or the Japanese Aid Agency], or to private
creditors such as investors in our Eurobonds." The Minister said that most external loans were
contracted on concessional terms. "Many of the multilateral loans are at zero
interests, 40 years maturity, and 10 years
grace. Others are at less than three percent
rate of interest." Okonjo-Iweala assured that the Federal
Government would continue to closely monitor
the nation's debt stock to keep it low. Her words, "we shall never be complacent about
our national debt. We need to be constantly
vigilant to limit the amount of debt and create
room for the private sector instead to borrow.
As such, we need to stay focused on three main
priorities. ''We should continue to monitor our external
borrowing and ensure that we do not slip back
to our high indebtedness prior to the debt relief
programme. As I mentioned earlier, the External
Borrowing Plan, helps to address this concern
by ensuring that we always have a comprehensive, transparent view of our foreign
borrowing. ''We should closely continue to monitor and limit
our domestic debt, and ensure that it stays
within a prudent and conservative range. We
should pay off debt that is due to the extent of
our ability. We should also continue to closely
monitor borrowing by states to ensure that the debt burdens of our state governments remain
within manageable levels and that borrowings
are applied to specific projects that yield results
for citizens of the state. In that regard, we enjoin banks and other
lenders to be careful and prudent when lending
to ensure that this is done within the existing
rules, regulations and guidelines."

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