IMF not worried about Nigeria’s debt, says Adeosun

The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, has said that the International Monetary Fund is not worried about Nigeria’s debt profile.

Adeosun said that the country had enough capacity to repay its debt obligations estimated at N21.7tn.

“We are pursuing a very measured strategy. We are running a budget deficit; the size of that deficit is coming down now. Nigeria is not among the countries that the IMF is worried about. We do have a challenge on debt service to revenue. That is because the interest cost is quite high and that is a function of two things.

“One is the fact that most of the debts were short-term; so, we are paying interests and compounding it. We have been refinancing treasury bills and issuing bonds. We have been refinancing treasury bills in the domestic market and replacing them with longer term debts in the international market. And this is reducing our cost of borrowing.”

She said that as of this time last year, the Federal Government was borrowing at an average cost of 18 per cent, adding that currently, it had reduced to 13 per cent.

The minister added that the Federal Government was working very hard on the country’s debt service cost and revenue collection.