The Akwa Ibom State government owed commercial banks N64.5 billion when Udom Emmanuel took over from Godswill Akpabio as governor, the state Commissioner for Finance, Akan Okon, has said.
Mr. Okon who spoke, Wednesday, in Uyo during a conversation on #ProsperityWithoutOil, organised by the Independent Newspaper Publishers Association, said the state government decided to restructure the debt into federal government bond so as to lessen the burden of servicing it.
“The loan was to be repaid within a period of three years, and the debt servicing obligation was in the region of N3.5 billion every month.
“Given what is on ground now, if we receive N7 billion monthly and pay out N3.5 billion, what is left won’t even be enough to do anything,” Mr. Okon said, adding that Akwa Ibom’s monthly revenue from the federation account in the last 10 months wasn’t up to one-sixth of what it used to receive some two to four years ago.
He said the window provided by the federal government bond allowed the state to pay back the loan in 20 years.
Even at that, Mr. Okon said, “Our cost profile today is much higher than five years ago when we used to receive between N25 billion to N30 billion (monthly)”.
“But we are able to use it and the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to make sure that workers salaries are paid.”
Both Mr. Okon and Mr. Emmanuel had served in Mr. Akpabio’s government, though briefly. Mr. Okon was finance commissioner, while Mr. Emmanuel was the secretary to the state government.

http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/202681-former-gov-akpabio-left-n64-5-billion-debt-akwa-ibom-commissioner.html

were d money

Bad econonic managers the lot of our governors are. Lagos has 100 billion in its debt management account just so it wont get trapped in the madness of debt repayment and you guy rush to follow Lagos into borrowing for capital projects without correspondingly increasing your IGR.

Capital projects are not worth anything if you dont go out to woo investors who will come and take advantage of your projects and set up shop. Look at what Amosun is doing to Lagos, meeting companies and investors and giving concessions using her distance to Lagos as leverage to attract investors and by that, you can tax them.

You need to bring in the companies in the state too into your tax programs, learn to use fines for those who break rules(traffic, environmental etc) only with these will your getting loan for capital project be any use as you will have a larger pool of money to pay from.

klassykute:
were d money

Dubai.

Akwa Ibom state is one of richest state in nigeria. intents of development Godswill did a good job. they should fine out how the money was spend.


I still Respect Godswill anyday.....