No discussion on restructuring Nigeria’s debt – IMF

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said there is currently no discussion on restructuring Nigeria’s debt.

The IMF African Department Director, Abebe Aemro Selassie, said this while speaking at the Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa press briefing at the ongoing 2023 IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings in Marrakesh, Morocco.

Commenting on the debt burden of the country, Selassie said,   “I am not aware of any debt discussions that are going on, debt profiling or debt restructuring on Nigeria.”

He said the most important cause of the pressures in Nigeria was the fact that the government did not generate enough tax revenue for all the services it needed to provide.

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He said, “Interest payment as a share of revenue is very high and not leaving much room to spend on other issue, that is the key issue that needs to be worked on.

“While there is not enough tax revenue, I think in the past reliance on oil when prices were high, and second is the subsidy regime, which also implies and entails lots of government resources being directed where they should not be.

“These are all interlined issues, including causing some of the inflation you see because in giving the difficulty to tap international capital market the government has had to rely more on domestic financing, which of course has crowded out the private sector and put constraints on monetary injections, which has weakened the exchange rate.”