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The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr Wale Edun, says the country’s debt situation is sustainable and does not require restructuring.
Edun said this on Saturday in Marrakech, on the sidelines of the ongoing World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) Annual Meetings.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports that Nigeria’s public debt stock as at December 31, 2022 stood at N46.25 trillion, equivalent to 103.11 billion dollars.
According to Debt Management Office (DMO), the public debt stock of the country consists of the domestic and external debts of the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) and the sub-national governments.
The DMO is the Federal Government agency established to coordinate the management of national debts.
Edun, who however, agreed that the country’s debt service revenue was on the high side, said that the response to that was to improve both oil and non-oil revenue.
“Also, we have spent time meeting oil producers and encouraging them to invest further in production, so as to boost revenue as oil prices are relatively high.
“President Bola Tinubu has also inaugurated a fiscal policy and tax reforms committee that is already working on improving revenue generation.
“The committee has a target of moving the country from under 10 per cent tax-to-GDP to 18 per cent within a year. That is also a way of dealing with debt servicing,” he said.
According to the minister, the more revenue you have the more affordable debt servicing will be.
“The world we are in now is a world of high interest rates. Debt is becoming unaffordable, ” he said.
He said that with the courageous steps that the Nigerian government under Tinubu had taken, the country was at the forefront of attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) that would further boost revenue generation.
“There is more to be done, but Nigeria is on the right path, taking the right decisions for the economy to recover and attract FDIs, and also achieve inclusivity of women and youths.
“These are painful reforms, but there is a set of interventions being rolled out to cushion their effects and improve the well-being of Nigerians,” Edun said.