Federal Executive Council approves more foreign debt!

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday approved a medium term debt management strategy to address the structure and level of the nation’s domestic and foreign debts.

As part of the strategy, government will access concessionary windows or raise cheaper foreign loans and use it to offset the more expensive domestic debts.

The Minister of State for Finance, Yerima Ngama who disclosed this while briefing State House correspondents on the outcome of the FEC meeting presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan at the State House, said the medium term debt management strategy was designed to address the challenges of growing domestic debt and create space for the private sector to access more credit.

“The strategy was developed jointly by the Debt Management Office (DMO) and the CBN with input from National Bureau of Statistics and the National Planning Commission,’’ he said. Mr Ngama said the structure of the nation’s debt was not optimal because 88 percent of the debt was domestic, while only 12 percent was foreign.