The International Monetary Fund on Monday expressed concern over Nigeria’s capacity to repay its debts and stressed the need for the Federal Government to mobilise more revenues domestically.

The Washington-based fund, at the public presentation of the Spring 2018 Issue of the Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa, said the public debt in the region was on the rise.

IMF Senior Resident Representative and Mission Chief for Nigeria, Amine Mati, said, “The number of countries in debt distress has increased. From six countries in 2014 to eight in 2015, to 10 in 2016, and today 15 countries. These are low-income economies.

“Now, I know the question that is going to come from here is: Where is Nigeria? Nigeria is not considered a low-income economy. Nigeria’s debt stock figure, which is 20 to 23 per cent of Gross Domestic Product, is still quite low by any standard. The issue is capacity to repay the debts. So, interest payment to revenue is an issue.”


On the need to ramp up domestic revenue mobilisation, Mati put Nigeria’s total revenue at six per cent of GDP.

“There is a lot that can be done to increase revenue very quickly,” he said.

Noting that Value Added Tax rate had been quite low in Nigeria, he said doubling the compliance on VAT from 25 to 50 per cent would increase the VAT ratio from 0.9 per cent of GDP to close to two per cent.

Nigeria’s debt stood at N21.73tn as of December 31, 2017, compared to N12.12tn as of June 30, 2015, according to the Debt Management Office.

The DMO had said the composition of the debt stock as of the end of 2017 showed that external debt was 26.64 per cent of the portfolio, up from 20.04 per cent in 2016, while the domestic debt was 73.36 per cent, down from 79.96 per cent in 2016.

The Director-General, DMO, Patience Oniha, in her remarks at the event, said the government had been working aggressively to shore up revenues as well as reduce borrowing costs.


“The debt service is a function of the interest that you pay on those borrowings as well as your revenue. The critical part is that revenue has been low relative to the size of the GDP. So that has to go up,” she said in an interview on the sidelines of the event.

According to her, there is an aggressive drive to raise revenues through the Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration scheme.

Oniha said, “What are we doing on debt service? The new debt management strategy, which we started implementing last year, seeks to moderate the growth of interest expense by shifting some of the borrowing externally.

“If we were borrowing on the domestic market, last year we would be borrowing at about 16 to 17 per cent and early on the year, 18 per cent. But we went to the international market. So rather than borrow that $4.8bn that we borrowed in the international market in the domestic market, we borrowed at below eight per cent. If we raised the money in the domestic market, we would have had to pay those high rates.”


The DMO DG said the government saved over N70bn from, estimated on a per annum basis, from that exercise.

“We are still borrowing because there are provisions for borrowing in the budget. But in terms of how much it cost us to borrow, we are working actively on reducing that and reducing the refinancing risk that we had with Treasury bills every 90 days, every six months.”

http://punchng.com/imf-doubts-nigerias-capacity-to-repay-debts/amp/?__twitter_impression=true[color=#000000][/color]

Buhari has destroyed this country both economically and politically .
Just under 3, just 3 yrs.

Buhari's struggle to become the president for the past 12 yrs is to kill , destroy and return Nigeria to stone ages.
Indeed, Nigerians have seen that Buhari has nothing tangible to offer Nigerians other than blood shed and economic sabotage ...

Definitely we are not capable of repaying.
The debt Obasanjo begged to be cancelled instead of repaying, who will lend us and believe we will repay.

Buhari has skyrocketed our debt already with his blind economic policies.

Boko haram may not end soon, even if it ends, the north will generate another one.

Many northern youths are uneducated and do not even care to be educated in order to contribute to capacity building

Electric cars are already in use and it's just a matter of years for our oil will be dumped.

Buhari is not smart economically and we do not have hope of getting a smater president on the near future since business minded Igbo's are always neglected due to nepotism.

Politicians are still stealing money.

Violence is still the order of the day, no stability.

Oli price has increased but our president is old and daft.

So IMF, Keep your money, no hope for the Sithole country.

God punish Britain for this useless amalgamation

Hmmm

SAI BABA!!! We no go pay

Nigeria’s debt stood at N21.73tn as of December 31, 2017, compared to N12.12tn as of June 30, 2015, according to the Debt Management Office.

Mr @Mbuhari where are the trillions of monies saved up at TSA cum recovered loots?

are you telling me that despite your "glorious achievements" Nigeria's total debt burden increased by almost 100% in your 3years of fighting corruption and blocking leakages?

something isn't adding up, maybe Pastor Osinbajo is borrowing to pay tithe on behalf of Nigeria...smh

OK

Lol. And the population is aggressively increasing. If you have children in Nigeria, it means your grandchildren are already in debt before they are born. Youths following near-to-grave octogenarians to early death.

buhariguy:
OK

Your man has added over 9 trillions since the end of 2015, and funny enough he & his gang are stealing public funds and lending same to the Nigeria-enterprise on high interest rates. How clever is that. This world is crazy.

Yeah we can't repaying it because we don't have it and there is nothing IMF will do about that .useless IMF organization where did you get the money you borrowed us?is not the same Africa? And for those who insulting the president you should ashamed of yourself buhari don't borrow money from IMF go to your state and ask your stupid and useless governor the money he borrowed from IMF what he used it for and when he will pay IMF back instead of accusing the president blindly.

johnmartus:
Yeah we can't repaying it because we don't have it and there is nothing IMF will do about that .useless IMF organization where did you get the money you borrowed us?is not the same Africa? And for those who insulting the president you should ashamed of yourself buhari don't borrow money from IMF go to your state and ask your stupid and useless governor the money he borrowed from IMF what he used it for and when he will pay IMF back instead of accusing the president blindly.

, who approved the borrowing

which kind stupid question you asked .he approved it for his purpose? Again tell your useless governor that IMF asked him to pay the money he borrowed.And besides not president approve loan national assembly approved loan.

bbxxxxxx:
, who approved the borrowing

johnmartus:
which kind stupid question you asked .he approved it for his purpose? Again tell your useless governor that IMF asked him to pay the money he borrowed.And besides not president approve loan national assembly approved loan.

, you can reference https://www.nairaland.com/4503099/why-oshiomole-personally-attacking-me