FG to borrow €3bn as Buhari presents budget in October

Ahmed Zainab

President Muhammadu Buhari may present the 2022 Appropriation Bill to a joint session of the National Assembly in October.

The Honourable Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, made this known at a press briefing in Abuja on Monday.

The minister said the government is ready to raise half of the €6.1bn, part of external borrowing to be used to fund budget deficit, through Eurobond and the other half through other windows.

Ahmed said, “We will be going on a road show from October 11 after we submit the budget to the National Assembly.

“We will be starting with the roadshow from the Nigerian investors in Lagos and then, we will be meeting with investors in New York and UK and within that week, we will be doing the pricing as well.

“We have an approval in the 2021 budget to fund the budget deficit 50 per cent locally and 50 per cent externally.

“So, the 50 per cent external borrowing is 6.1 billion euros. We are planning to do about half of that in Eurobonds and the other half through other windows such as multilateral and bilateral sources.”

This is foreign funding is coming amidst criticisms over Nigeria’s increasing debt profile, however, the minister said the government was borrowing ‘sensibly and responsibly’.

“We are borrowing sensibly responsibly to invest on infrastructures in rail and other infrastructures like rail.

“These investments will make returns in future. If we do not do these investments, we will regret. These investments will return revenue in the future,” Ahmed said.

The minister also expressed satisfactions on the NBS’ report indicated that the nations’ GDP grew by 5.01 per cent.

She said, “Broadly speaking, the services sector recorded a strong performance growing at 9.27 per cent during the quarter representing the fastest growth in the services sector since 2010.”