- Senator Udo Udoma, the minister of budget and national planning has said that Nigeria can embark on more borrowing
- The minister said that this is advisable because the country, going by its present economic standing, will run no risk after the move
- He revealed that Nigeria has one of the lowest debt levels among other African nations
The minister of budget and national planning, Senator Udo Udoma, has said that Nigeria still has ample room to borrow more whenever it needs to do so.
Udoma explained that this is possible since the country was not running any risk of debt. The senator further said that it had one of the lowest debt levels among other African nations, Punch reports.
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Udoma, through his special adviser on media, Akpandem James, said: “Nigeria has a sustainable debt profile with ample room to borrow more whenever we may require doing so. Nigeria runs no debt risk and the Debt Management Office carries out an annual Debt Sustainability Analysis to ensure that we stay that way.”
Udoma made this revelation in Bali, Indonesia, at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, adding that the implementation of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan 2017-2020 was moving Nigeria’s economy in a positive direction.
The minister remarked that actions taken since the inauguration of the plan in early 2017 had aided the building of buffers and appropriate measures to safeguard the economy from external shocks.
He said that due to the collapse of crude oil prices in 2014, which culminated in the country’s economy sliding into recession in 2016, the government developed the ERGP in early 2017.
Speaking to his audience, Udoma said that the plan had five strategic areas of macroeconomic stability, economic diversification and growth drivers, competitiveness, social inclusion and jobs, as well as governance and other supportive factors.
He said that the positive trends recorded in Nigeria's economic indicators since the launch of the ERGP had shown that the plan was working.
He said: “We have been able to bring down inflation from 18.7 per cent in January last year to 11.2 per cent by August this year. Our aim is to bring inflation down to a single digit by the end of the plan period in 2020.
“The exchange rate market has been stabilised through the introduction of the investors and importers’ foreign exchange window. We have also been able to build up our external reserves from $27bn in 2016 to $43.9bn by early this month.
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“Our current account, as a ratio of Gross Domestic Product, has moved from a deficit of 3.2 per cent in 2015 to a surplus of 2.8 per cent by end of last year. And this is built on export growth, including significant growth in non-oil exports that has resulted in the country recording a consistently positive trade balance since the fourth quarter of 2016.
"Through positive engagements with the communities in the Niger Delta, we have improved the environment for oil production. Apart from technical hitches, from time to time, we are now able to produce up to two million barrels per day and take advantage of the more favourable international oil prices. Our target is to produce 2.3mbpd.”
Meanwhile, NAIJ.com reported that the analysts at FSDH Research had urged the federal government to tackle infrastructure problems and security challenges in Nigeria to sustain the current economic growth.
NAIJ.com gathered that in its monthly economic and financial market outlook report for April 2018, the analysts said that the prospect of Nigeria’s economic growth improved following an expansion in the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) in March 2018 after recording two consecutive months of slowdown.
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Source: Naija.ng