Nigeria’s growing debt profile has raised the country’s debt servicing bill to N896.56 billion in the first three months of 2022.
External and Domestic Debt Service Payment Reports for the first quarter of 2022 by the Debt Management Office, DMO, indicates that the figure represents a 12 per cent decline year-on-year from N1.02 trillion spent in 2021 during the same period.
A breakdown of the amount showed that N668.7 billion was spent on domestic debt service, representing a 9.0 per cent rise when compared to N612.7 billion spent in Q1’21, while N228 billion was spent on servicing of external debt representing a 44 per cent decline from N410.1 billion spent of Q1’21.
Recall that the Debt Management Office recently announced in a statement that Nigeria’s total public debt stock as at March 31, 2022, was N41.60 trillion or USD100.07 billion.
The DMO said the amount represents Domestic and External Debt Stocks of the Federal Government of Nigeria, the 36 State Governments and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.
As at December 31, 2021, the office said the comparative figures were N39.56 trillion or USD95.78 billion.
It explained that “The Total Public Debt Stock includes New Domestic Borrowing by the FGN to part finance the deficit in the 2022 Appropriation Act, the USD1.25 billion Eurobond issued in March 2022 and disbursements by multilateral and bilateral lenders. There were also increases in the Debt Stock of the State Governments and the FCT.
“Whilst the Total Public Debt to GDP at 23.27% was below Nigeria’s self-imposed limit of 40%, the momentum by the Government to grow and diversify revenues remain a priority to ensure that public debt is sustainable.
“Initiatives in this regard are yielding results as Actual Revenues for January to November 2021 at N5.51 trillion was 39.21% more than the N3.96 trillion recorded in 2020. Similarly, the share of Non-oil Revenue grew to 80% compared to 61% in 2020.”
Meanwhile, the Debt Management Office has indicated that the country spent N3.83 trillion on debt servicing in 15 months.
Between January and March 2022, Nigeria spent N668.69bn on domestic debt servicing, while it spent $548.79m on external debt servicing, giving a total of N896.56bn.