EditorPresident Muhammadu Buhari may present the 2022 Appropriation Bill to a joint session of the National Assembly in October.
The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, hinted this in Abuja during a briefing organised to give insight into the recent Gross Domestic Product estimates for Q2 2021 published by the National Bureau of Statistics.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelAhmed said the government planned to raise half of the €6.1bn through euro bonds and the other half through other windows.
She said, “We will be going on a road show from October 11 after we submit the budget to the National Assembly. We will be starting with the roadshow from the Nigerian investors in Lagos and then, we will be meeting with investors in New York and UK and within that week, we will be doing the pricing as well.
“We have an approval in the 2021 budget to fund the budget deficit 50% locally and 50% externally. So, the 50% external borrowing is 6.1 billion euros. We are planning to do about half of that in Eurobonds and the other half through other windows such as multilateral and bilateral sources.”
Speaking on Nigeria’s debt profile, the minister said the government was borrowing ‘sensibly and responsibly’.
“We are borrowing sensibly responsibly to invest on infrastructures in rail and other infrastructures like rail. These investments will make returns in future. If we do not do these investments, we will regret. These investments will return revenue in the future,” Ahmed said.
The minister expressed delight that the NBS’ report indicated that the nations’ GDP grew by 5.01%.
She described it as the strongest real GDP growth the economy has recorded since Q4 2014.
Ahmed said a better result could have been achieved, adding that security challenges slowed down the agricultural sector.
“Broadly speaking, the services section tor recorded a strong performance growing at 9.27% during the quarter representing the fastest growth in the services sector since 2010,” she said.
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