Adeosun Reveals How Much Nigeria Plans To Borrow

Kemi Adeosun, the minister of finance, has revealed that Nigeria is planning to borrow up to $5 billion from several sources to plug deficits in the 2016 budget.

Reuters reports that Adeosun wrote this in an article entitled “Nigeria's Economy: The Road to Recovery”, which was circulated by the ministry of finance on Thursday, January 21.

"Our total borrowing expectations are now at 1.8 trillion naira ($9.1 billion).We hope to raise approximately $4.5 - 5 billion from multiple external sources. This includes multilateral agencies, export credit agencies and we are also planning to tap the Eurobond market," she wrote.

The minister noted that said the government was optimistic that it would "receive the desired support" after cutting government costs and improving revenue collection.

Last month President Muhammadu Buhari presented a 6.08 trillion budget, which includes a tripling of capital expenditure to improve rail, road and power networks.

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Adeosun stressed that the government was committed to fulfil its plans and would not reduce its infrastructure investments. The minister also noted that although the budget was based on an oil price of $38 per barrel there was enough flexibility for prices to be lower.

On Wednesday, January 20, the Naira continued to depreciate on the parallel market and lost N2 to exchange at N297 to the dollar, from N295 it traded at on Tuesday.

Commenting on the naira's slump, Adeosun wrote: "The contentious issue of the exchange rate policy that will complement the fiscal policy of this administration will be a product of determining the real equilibrium exchange rate path of the naira.

"The finance ministry expects that the monetary policy authorities will be in a position to determine the steps required to put the currency in equilibrium after considering a number of variables”.

Meanwhile, a civil society organization Rescue Nigerian Economy Project has recently urged President Buhari to save Nigeria’s economy by urgency redeploying Adeosun to another ministry.

According to the group, the finance minister is a rookie who is not qualified to find solutions to numerous problems confronting economy.

Source: Legit.ng