End Borrowing, Nigeria Can No Longer Depend On It – Minister Tells Senate 

The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Wale Edun has stated that borrowing money is not a viable option to finance the country’s budget for 2024.

VerseNews reports that Edun who appeared before the Senate Committee, chaired by Senator Sani Musa, which was interrogating the 2024-2026 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper, he declared this.

The finance minister suggested to the joint committee that investing more money in infrastructure would be an effective means to finance Nigeria’s annual budgets.

“We have an existing borrowing profile. Our direction of tariff is to reduce the quantum of borrowing or intercepting deficit financing in the 2024 budget,” he said.

“Clearly the environment that we have now, internationally as well as nationally we are in no position to rely on borrowing.

“They are in the process,  sacrificing that immediate goal for compacting their economies, or at least contracting the money supplies and pushing up the interest rates and of course high-interest rates and investments don’t go together.

“What is left for us to access those funds are expensive so it is the last thing that we must rely on. As we know we have all the figures and debt servicing and cushioning 98 per cent of government revenue.

“The last thing you can think of is to pike on more debts. The government needs to not just maintain its activity, it needs to spend more. If you look at government spending, if you look at the budget as a percentage of GDP, ours is one of the lowest being 10%, even Ghana is at 25%, and rich ones they are 50%.”

Zacch Adedeji, Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), and Patience Oniha, Director General of the Debt Management Office, accompanied the minister to the upper chamber.