Nigeria's DMO Puts Alarms On Revenue and Borrowing
Nigeria's Debt Management Office wants the nation to have a strategy to deal with its poor revenues and the country’s escalating amount of new borrowings. That is a wise call except that it would be hard. With an increasing population in a highly unproductive nation, I am not sure we can change this trajectory fast. Largely, everything could just be short-term with no long-term thinking towards building systems that can bring revenue.
The call was made by the Director-General, Debt Management Office (DMO), Patience Oniha at the interactive session on the 2022-2024 Medium Term Expenditure/Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF/FSP) held by the National Assembly’s House Committee on Finance in Abuja.
In her presentation, Oniha stated that successive low revenues in the Budget, which is further compounded by less than 100% realization, have reflected in high levels of borrowing in the recent years. Expectedly, these borrowings have resulted in a high growth rate in the Debt Stock as well as Debt Service. She added that the trend is the same in the draft 2022-2024 MTEF.”
