Nigeria debt 2022: If the National Assembly grants the president’s request to reorganize the Ways and Means Advances, Nigeria’s public debt load might reach N77 trillion. The Central Bank of Nigeria uses a borrowing instrument called Thee Ways and Means Advances to pay for budgetary gaps in the government.
In 2022, the Federal Government spent N5.24 trillion on debt payments between January and November 2022, out of its N12.87tn total spending for the same period. During the public presentation of the 2023 budget, which was hosted by the Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Dr. Zainab Ahmed, the Director-General of the Debt Management Office, Patience Oniha, made this announcement.
But she added that without N5 trillion in additional borrowing and N2 trillion in promissory notes, the debt would be N70 trillion. But the President’s request to restructure was denied by the Senate. In its December 2022 edition of the Nigeria Development Update, the World Bank projected that interest payments on the federal government’s borrowing from the CBN would gulp about 62 per cent of government revenue by 2027 despite the restructuring plan.
The PUNCH recently reported that the FG borrowed N6.31tn from the CBN through Ways and Means Advances in 10 months. A Professor of Development Macroeconomics at the University of Lagos, Prof Olufemi Saibu, criticised the government for over-borrowing.
Saibu urged the government to lessen its huge expenditure costs and channel money into more productive sectors of the economy. The finance minister also said N3.36tn was earmarked for fuel subsidy in Nigeria’s 2023 budget.