Senate may re-open plenary next week to approve $1bn Euro bond

The Senate may cut short its current plenary holiday to consider request from the Presidency to source finances for funding the deficit in the 2017 budget.
Top among the issues for consideration, according to sources, is the plan to raise $1 billion on the Eurobond market to plug the budget deficit.
The Federal Government has proposed to borrow some N2.32 trillion to partly fund the 2017 budget deficit estimated at N2.36 trillion and about 2.18 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
It was gathered that the decision to re-open plenary was to facilitate the current processing of the budget.
“We cannot wait until the February 21 date when we had scheduled for plenary session to open to consider the euro bond request request. I cannot categorically say that this is the date we are re opening the plenary but I can tell you that it must be from next week” a lawmaker said.
Finance minister Kemi Adeosun had said last year that the government had approved the plan to issue international debt for the first time since 2013.
“We are about to appoint our advisers. We are raising one billion dollars. I want to re-emphasise that we have a strategic plan that will take us out of the recession that we find ourselves in,” the Finance Minister said.
President Buhari while presenting the proposed 2017 budget estimates to a joint session of National Assembly in December confirmed the planned borrowing, and also announced government intention to source N1.067 trillion – about 46 percent from external sources while N1.254 trillion will hopefully come from the domestic market.
Last year, the Senate had rejected President Muhammadu Buhari’s bid to borrow $29.9 billion external loan.
The upper legislative chamber unanimously threw out the President’s request for external loan of $29.96 billion to execute key infrastructural projects across the country between 2016 and 2018 because the letter conveying it was not accompanied by a borrowing plan.