The federal government paid $1.17 billion to service foreign debt commitments in the first half of 2023.
The Export and International Payment data released by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has shown.
The Nigerian government spent over 85% of its revenue servicing debt in February 2023.
President Bola Tinubu has vowed to break Nigeria's over-reliance on borrowing for public spending. He promised to end the resulting burden of debt servicing it places on the management of Nigeria's limited government revenues.
Government spends on debt for six months.
The CBN data shows that the federal government spent $112.35 million on paying down its foreign loans in January 2023.
The government spend was $288.5 million in February, followed by $400.5 million in March. A significant $92.8 million expense was made in April.
Also, $221 million was spent on fulfilling these obligations as of May. The most notable feature of this data, though, was the month of June, which had an extraordinarily high servicing cost of $543 million, the highest amount in 13 months.
According to data by the Debt Management Office, Nigeria's major lenders include China, the World Bank, African Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, Japan, France and others.
Remittance for the period
An examination of the data revealed that $951.99 million in direct remittances were made in total during the first half of 2023.
According to the data, January's total came to $79.2 million, while February's total came to $83.76 million. A substantial amount of $138.6 million was tallied in March, and then $159.04 million was transferred in April.
May saw a $202 million inflow, and June saw a considerable increase with $297.4 million in direct remittances.
After eliminating the petrol subsidy and harmonising currency rates, the federal administration declared on Monday, August 29, 2023, that it had no intention of borrowing money from any domestic or international institutions.
This was said by Chief Wale Edun, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, at the conclusion of the first Federal Executive Council meeting on Monday in Abuja.
According to Edun, a number of palliatives have been made available to lessen the impact on a short-, medium-, and long-term basis thanks to the additional money from subsidy elimination.
He reaffirmed the government of President Bola Tinubu's desire to rescue the economy from the predicament it has fallen into over time.
Nigeria's debt stock hits N82 trillion amid CBN's naira devaluation
Nigeria's public debt has risen to N82 trillion from N77 trillion before the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) exchange rate unification, announced on Wednesday, June 14, 2023.
According to a press release by the CBN, all exchange rate windows are collapsed into the Importers and Exporters (I&E) window, showing a merger of the multiple exchange rates.
Before floating the naira, Nigeria's debt stock was valued at N448 billion by the Debt Management Office (DMO).
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