Nigeria’s total debt stock rose to N27.40 trillion in 2019, an increase of around 12.36 percent year-on-year from N24.38 trillion in 2018, according to latest data from the Debt Management Office (DMO).
Domestic debt grew 10.5 percent to N18.38 trillion in 2019 accounting for 67.07 percent of total debt stock.
The FG owed N14.27 trillion while FCT and states owed N4.1 trillion.
On the other hand, External debt rose by 9.5 percent to $27.68 billion (or N9 trillion based on CBN’s official rate of N326/$ used by DMO in their computation).
Of the total external debt, FG owed $23.11 billion while FCT and states owed $4.56 billion.
Foreign-debt made up 32.93 percent of the total debt stock compared to 31.82 percent in the preceding year.
Nigeria’s total debt to GDP ratio remained at 19 percent approximately, below the 25 percent debt limit imposed by the government.
The total interest payment on domestic debt according to DMO data stood at N1.69 trillion in the year while cost of servicing foreign debt (principal and interest) stood at $1.33 billion.
A breakdown of sub-national domestic debt showed Lagos has a debt stock of N444.23 billion, while Rivers accounted for N266.94 billion and Akwa Ibom had N237.34 billion to rank the three most indebted states.
For external debt, Lagos closed the year with a debt stock of $1.4 billion while Kaduna and Edo state owed $554.78 million and $275.93 million respectively.
The bulk of the external debt for the states was however, multilateral.
The DMO said the Domestic Debt Stock data was for Thirty-Three (33) States as at December 31, 2019 , while, Domestic Debt Stock Figures for Borno State was as at September 30, 2019, Katsina State was at June 30, 2019, and for Rivers State was at December 31, 2018.
Segun Adams
