The Federal Government has projected that debt servicing will cost N10.43tn by 2025, according to the 2023-2035 Medium Term Expenditure Framework & Fiscal Strategy Paper.
This is a 182.66 per cent increase from the N3.69tn budgeted for debt service in 2022.
Multilateral agencies and economists have constantly warned the Federal Government about the rising cost of debt service, which can trigger a crisis for the country.
However, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, and the Director General of the Debt Management Office, Patience Oniha, have insisted that the country does not have a debt problem but a revenue challenge.
In a recent document by the DMO, the DG stated that high debt levels would often lead to high debt services and affect investments in infrastructure.
According to the DMO DG, “High debt levels lead to heavy debt service which reduces resources available for investment in infrastructure and key sectors of the economy.”
In the document, she stressed the need for debt sustainability, which she defined as the ability to service all current and future obligations, while maintaining the capacity to finance policy objectives without resort to unduly large adjustments or exceptional financing such as arrears accumulation, debt restructuring, which could otherwise compromise the economy’s stability.
Speaking at the launch of the World Bank’s Nigeria Development Update titled, ‘The urgency for business unusual,’ held recently in Abuja, the finance minister had admitted that Nigeria was struggling to service its debt.
She said: “Already, we are struggling with being able to service debt because even though revenue is increasing, the expenditure has been increasing at a much higher rate, so it is a very difficult situation.”
The International Monetary Fund had earlier warned that debt servicing might gulp 100 per cent of the Federal Government’s revenue by 2026 if the government failed to implement adequate measures to improve revenue generation.
According to the IMF’s Resident Representative for Nigeria, Ari Aisen, based on a macro-fiscal stress test that was conducted on Nigeria, interest payments on debts might wipe up the country’s entire earnings in the next four years.
Aisen said: “The biggest critical aspect for Nigeria is that we have done a macro-fiscal stress test, and what you observe is the interest payments as a share of revenue, and as you see us in terms of the baseline from the Federal Government of Nigeria, the revenue of almost 100 per cent is projected by 2026 to be taken by debt service.
“So, the fiscal space or the amount of revenues that will be needed and this, without considering any shock, is that most of the revenues of the Federal Government are now, in fact, 89 per cent and it will continue if nothing is done to be taken by debt service.”
Less than two months after Aisen’s warning, the finance minister disclosed that Nigeria’s debt service cost surpassed its revenue in the first four months of this year.
Debt service gulped N1.94tn between January and April 2022, as against a retained revenue of N1.63tn.