Nigeria will not apply for relief to get out of its crippling N31 trillion debt burden.
The International Monetary Fund, IMF, is pushing debt relief for low income countries.
Zainab Ahmed, the minister of finance, budget, and National Planning, disclosed this on Tuesday, October 13, 2020, during the public presentation of the 2021 budget in Abuja.
Responding to a question of whether Nigeria would take the option of the debt relief, Ahmed said the government was not considering such at this time.
She said several loan agreements have been entered with various lenders, adding asking for debt relief would portend Nigeria as a country that cannot repay its indebtedness in the eyes of creditors.
The Minister also defended the 2021 budget deficit which has exceeded the Fiscal Responsibility Act threshold of three percent.
President Muhammadu Buhari had presented a budget proposal of ₦13.08trillion up by 22.9 percent from the ₦10.8 trillion 2020 budget, with revenue projected at ₦7.5trillion.
The budget deficit is projected to grow by ₦5.21 trillion made up of Government-Owned Enterprises and project-tied loans thus representing 3.64 percent of the budget size.
The ₦5.21 trillion budget deficit exceedes the three percent threshold prescribed by the FRA 2007 for the annual budget.
Ahmed said that although the 2021 budget deficit exceeded the three percent threshold, the government has not breached the law.
She said that there is a provision in the Fiscal Responsibility Act that allows the government to surpass the threshold during “unusual times.”
Source: The Nation
