ALERT | Nigeria’s Debt Rises by N4.17trillion in just one year

Nigeria's latest debt profile has risen to N16.29tn, the Debt Management Office has said. Statistics from the DMO on Tuesday showed that the country’s total debt liability had risen to N16.29tn as of June 30, 2016. As of June 2015, the country’s total debt stood at N12.12tn.

This means that within the one-year period (July 2015 to June 2016), the country’s total debt rose by N4.17tn, or 34.41 percent.

A breakdown of the country’s debt profile shows that

external debt by the federal and state governments stood at $11.26bn or N3.19tn as of June 30, 2016. It was $10.32bn or N2.03tn by July last year.

According to the DMO, the Central Bank of Nigeria’s official exchange rates of N283 to $1 as of June 30, 2016, and N197 as at December 2015 were used in arriving at the naira equivalent of the foreign debt status.

The domestic debt of the Federal Government alone stood at N10.61tn as of June this year, up from N8.4tn a year ago.

This means that within 12 months, the Federal Government’s domestic debt profile rose by N2.21tn or 26.31 percent.

The domestic debt of the states stood at N2.5tn at the end of June this year, whereas it was N1.69tn in July 2015. This means that within a period of one year, the domestic debt of the states rose by N810bn, an increase of 47.93 percent.

Although the Federal Government had for long acknowledged that it was borrowing too much from the domestic debt market and crowding out the private sector, current debt statistics show that the trend has not changed.