Nigeria Not Planning To Restructure Debt – Finance Minister

The minister of finance, budget and national planning, Zainab Ahmed, has said Nigeria was not planning to restructure its debt, contradicting her earlier claim that the government was discussing with World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on debt restructuring for the country.

President of World Bank Group, David Malpass, had said the country alongside Ghana were yet to approach the bank as well as the IMF for the framework on debt restructuring.

Speaking during the presentation of the draft 2023 budget to stakeholders on Wednesday, the minister said Nigeria remains within healthy limits and it als remains committed to meeting its domestic obligations.

“Let me say that debt is provided for in our annual debt services provider for an annual appropriations and also in terms of disbursement for our funds. It is a first line chart. So that is how we’ve been able to continuously ensure that we meet our domestic as well as foreign debt service obligations,” the minister said at the event that was held in Abuja.

Mrs Ahmed said the federal government will continue to utilise appropriate debt management tools to streamline the costs and the risk profile and the debt portfolio including leaning more on concessionary loans, spreading out of maturities to avoid bunches “so that you don’t have too many instruments maturing at any particular point in time and also re-profiling the maturities by refinancing short term loans to long term debt instruments.”