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Nigeria must take loans to fund 2018 budget, capital projects —DMO
The Director-General of the Debt Management Office (DMO), Patience Oniha, on Monday, said the federal government must take loans to fund the 2018 budget and capital projects.
Oniha made the disclosure while speaking at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa themed “Domestic Revenue Mobilisation and Private Investment.”
She said with Nigeria’s present level of foreign reserves, crude oil production and population, the country can not claim to be an oil-producing nation like Saudi Arabia.
The DMO boss added that the nation needs to borrow because of the shortfall in its reserves.
“We have since realised we should not be benchmarking ourselves against these countries. We borrow because there is a revenue shortfall.
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“The national assembly passed the budget last week and we know it was higher than what the executive presented. So, as a debt manager, what I am looking for is to see where the funding of that incremental size may come in from, ” she said.
According to her, Nigerian government would take loans to augment the current shortfall in the nation’s reserves.
“All of government’s borrowings were targeted at infrastructural development. Without borrowing, we won’t be able to deliver on the budget and I think we should be clear about that and a lot of that went into capital projects.”
The federal government had raised some debt instruments to in 2017 to finance some major projects in the country.
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