BABAJIDE OKEOWO
The Federal Government plans to borrow N1.6 trillion from both international and local sources to finance the 2019 budget, the Director-General of the Debt Management Office (DMO), Ms. Patience Oniha has disclosed.
Oniha made this disclosure while speaking at the Association of Issuing Houses of Nigeria’s semi-annual business lunch in Lagos State. According to her, the government adopted a 50:50 approach to spread its borrowing between international and local borrowings.
According to Ms. Oniha, the Government has recently made an effort to reduce its debt profile as the level of the new borrowings dropped from N2.2 trillion in 2017 to N1.6 trillion in 2018.
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“About N1.6tn has been set for borrowing in 2019, and the government adopted a 50:50 approach to spread its borrowing between international and local borrowings,” she said.
In a related development, Oniha denies that the FG is crowding out the private sector from the debt market According to her, the notion was untrue because corporate organisations prefer to borrow from banks.
“There are issues around getting sub-nationals and corporates to come to the market. Corporates prefer to borrow from banks because it is faster and has a lower risk than the debt market. In order for us to get these people to come to the market, we have to go back to the drawing board and plan how to tackle these issues” she added.
