Debt Office raises N1.104tr to fund 2010 budget deficit

Guardian

3 June 2011

Debt Office raises N1.104tr to fund 2010 budget deficit

2011 deficit financing to take N865.24b

Panel lists 11,886 projects, decries graft

A SUM of N1.104 trillion was last year raised by the Debt Management Office (DMO) to finance the funding gap of the N5.160 trillion 2010 Amended and Supplementary Budgets.

The Director-General of DMO, Dr. Abraham Nwankwo who disclosed this, said the sum was raised from the monthly sovereign bond market issue locally by the DMO.

Again, Nwankwo disclosed that this year, the agency has been tasked to raise the sum of N865.24 billion to finance the funding gap of the N4.5 trillion 2011 Budget.

He made the disclosure last Tuesday at a lecture he delivered at his alma mater, University of Nigeria (UNN), Nssuka where he also had a stint as lecturer after graduation. He was speaking on the topic: “Stages of Nigeria’s public debt management,” and latter dote-tale to the deployment of the proceeds of the N4.5 trillion raised from the domestic market during the period under review.

The DMO chief said: “The link between the transformation of the sovereign bond market and the economic development could be inferred from the portion of the deficit in the annual budget, which is funded from proceeds of FGN bonds. The contribution has grown from N27 billion in 2005 to N524 billion in 2009 and went up to N1.104 trillion in 2010. In addition , to general budget support, proceeds of domestic bond issuance were also used to fund special government stimulus spending initiatives between 2008 and 2010,’’ Nwankwo further declared.

He presented a public debt table of 19 countries consisting of developed and developing countries which listed Nigeria as one of the least indebted countries by debt to GDP ratio.

Meanwhile, the Presidential Projects Assessment Committee (PPAC) yesterday submitted its report to President Goodluck Jonathan, decrying the prevalence of corruption in the handling of government projects by “many self-seeking officers and contractors.”