NBS puts Nigeria’s foreign debt at $11.4bn, domestic N14.02tr at 2016

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has revealed that the total foreign and domestic debt stocks of the federal and the 36 states governments as at December 31, 2016 stood at about $11.41 billion and N14.02 trillion respectively.
The NBS latest release on the position of the Nigerian Domestic and Foreign Debt for 2016 shows further disaggregation that $7.99 billion of the country’s foreign debt were from multilateral agencies; $198.25 million were bilateral (AFD) and $3.22 billion from the Exim Bank of China credited to the Federal Government account.
The report shows that over 68.72 per cent of Nigeria’s total foreign debt outlay belong to the Federal Government while all the 36 states and the Federal Capital territory, FCT, accounted for the balance 31.28 per cent.
Equally, the total Federal Government debt, the report said, represented about 78.89 per cent of the country’s total domestic debt, with the states and the FCT making up the 21.11 per cent balance.
Data on the domestic debt stock by instruments, showed about N7.56 trillion, or 68.41 per cent of the total debt stock were in federal government bonds; N3.28 trillion, or 29.64 per cent in treasury bills and N215.99 million, or 1.95 per cent in treasury bonds.
On a state-by-state basis, details of the foreign debts revealed that Lagos State has the highest profile of $1.381 billion, or 38.7 per cent, among the 36 states and the FCT; followed by Kaduna with $222.881 million, or 6.25 per cent, Edo $183.64 million, or 5.15 per cent, Cross River $114.996 million, or 3.22 per cent and Ogun $103.416 million, or 2.9 per cent.
Also on the domestic front, Lagos State topped among the 36 states and the FCT, as it responsible for 10.54 per cent of the total debts (about N311.76 billion), followed by Delta with N241.2 billion, or 8.15 per cent; Akwa Ibom N155.4 billion, or 5.25 per cent; FCT N152.8 billion, or 5.16 per cent and Osun N147.07 billion, or 4.97 per cent.