- As National Debt Profile Hits N32.92trn
Nigeria has failed to make the list of countries that benefit from the latest debt service relief initiative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The IMF, in a press release on Tuesday, disclosed that it has approved a third tranche grant for debt service relief for 28 countries under the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT).
The IMF had set up the CCRT in a bid to provide grants to pay debt service owed by eligible low-income members countries, during the period in review.
The purpose of the debt relief initiative under the CCRT is to free up resources to meet exceptional balance payments need created by disaster rather than having to allocate those resources to debt service.
Also, the purpose of the debt relief initiative in the CCRT is to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on low-income countries.
However, Nigeria couldn’t make the list of recipients of the latest tranche of grants for debt service relief. The third tranche is expected to run between April 14, 2021 to October 15, 2021.
The beneficiaries of the third CCRT tranche are Afghanistan, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Tajikistan, Togo and Yemen.
It would be recalled that the second tranche of the debt service relief was approved on October 2, 2020.
Last week, The New Diplomat had reported that Nigeria’s total public debt portfolio as at December 31, 2020, stood at N32.92 trillion, according to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) latest figures.
According to NBS report, N12.71 trillion or 38.60% of the debt was external, while N20.21 trillion or 61.40% of the debt was domestic.
Further breakdown of the report revealed that the domestic debt of the 36 States with the inclusion of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was put at N4.19 trillion, at the fourth quarter of 2020.
A disaggregation of the foreign debt showed that Multilateral debt, which is the debt owed international financial institution such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, stood at $17.93 billion (N6.80 trillion).
Also, the bilateral debt, which is the debt owed to countries or private banks, stood at $4.06 billion (4.23trillion)
Similarly, the commercials debt, which is the debt used to fund major capital expenditures, stood at $11.17 billion (N4.23 trillion).
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