Nigeria’s Unbudgeted Spending Hits N8.83trn, Widens Deficit By 2% Of GDP — IMF

Nigeria has left about N8.83 trillion (roughly $6.15 billion) in public spending out of its recent official budgets, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said.

The IMF’s resident representative in Nigeria, Christian Ebeke, disclosed on Wednesday that the unreported spending, equivalent to two per cent of GDP, has created a gap between the country’s reported fiscal deficit and its actual financing needs.

LEADERSHIP reports that the N8.83 trillion is calculated based on the National Bureau of Statistics’ (NBS) latest full-year nominal GDP figure of N441.5 trillion for 2025.

Ebeke made the disclosure while addressing business executives in Lagos.

According to the NBS, Nigeria’s nominal GDP rose to N441.5 trillion in 2025 from N372.8 trillion in 2024, driven by improved performance across the oil and non-oil sectors.

Applying the IMF’s two per cent estimate to this figure puts the value of the unrecorded expenditure at approximately N8.83 trillion, or about $6.15 billion at the Central Bank of Nigeria’s average 2025 exchange rate of N1,436 to the dollar.

Ebeke explained that the discrepancy arose because some capital spending was not captured in budget documents or implementation reports, making Nigeria’s fiscal deficit appear smaller than the actual level of government borrowing.

He linked the unreported expenditure partly to large government projects executed outside the formal budget process, saying this had distorted assessments of the country’s fiscal position and public investment levels.

“So far we think that there are about two per cent of GDP of expenditure that were not reported that should be reported and should be recorded, so that this statistical discrepancy will disappear,” Ebeke said.

The disclosure comes months after the NBS rebased the economy, changing its GDP base year from 2010 to 2019, a move that significantly widened the size of the reported economy and, by extension, the naira value tied to any percentage-based fiscal estimate.