By Adedapo Adesanya
Latest figures released by the Debt Management Office (DMO) showed that adjusted to periodical rates, Nigeria’s total debt stood at N27.4 trillion as at December 2019.
The latest debt statistics, which were released by the debt office on Wednesday, indicated a 5 percent increase compared to September 2019 figures, which put Nigeria’s total debt profile at N26.2 trillion.
The DMO explained that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) official exchange rate of N326 per dollar as at December 31, 2019 was used in converting the domestic debts to dollars.
This means that total debt owed in dollars declined to $84.1 billion in December 2019 from $85.4 billion in September, where a N307/$1 rate was used by the debt office as against a N326/$1 used for the latest data.
In the instance that the N307/$1 exchange rate had been used in December, the total debt portfolio would have declined to N25.8 trillion in December from N26.2 trillion in September instead of rising to N27.4 trillion recorded at N326/$1.
The N27.4 trillion included the total external and domestic debt portfolios of the federal government and the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
According to the DMO data, a breakdown of the debt showed that domestic debt took the lion’s share of 67.1 percent amounting to N18.3 trillion of the total debt.
A further analysis showed that Federal Government’s share of the domestic debt portfolio totalled N14.2 trillion (52.1 percent), while in total, all the states of the Federation inclusive of the FCT owe N4.1 trillion (14.9 percent).
The country’s total external debt was 9.02 trillion, which makes up 32.9 percent of the total debt portfolio.
Out of the total external debt sum, the Federal Government owe N7.5 trillion, which amounted to 27.5 percent, while the states and the FCT owe N1.4 trillion or 5.4 percent of the total debt portfolio.
Modupe Gbadeyanka