Federal Government of Nigeria will launch its Eurobond in October and it is expected to also present the 2022 budget same month, according to the Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed.
Gatekeepers News reports that Ahmed on Monday disclosed that the Government will launch the planned Eurobond on October 11 and also organise roadshows for the dollar-denominated issuance in Lagos and New York with the aim of raising about $3 billion.
Ahmed noted that the Government is also aiming to raise the same amount through multilateral and bilateral borrowing to fund its 2021 budget deficit.
She hinted that President Muhammadu Buhari will submit the 2022 bill in October but did not give a specific date.
In her words: “We will be going on a road show from October 11 after we submit the budget to the National Assembly.
“We will be starting with the roadshow from the Nigerian investors in Lagos and then, we will be meeting with investors in New York and UK and within that week, we will be doing the pricing as well.
“We have an approval in the 2021 budget to fund the budget deficit 50 per cent locally and 50 per cent externally.
“So, the 50 per cent external borrowing is 6.1 billion euros. We are planning to do about half of that in Eurobonds and the other half through other windows such as multilateral and bilateral sources.”
Ahmed while responding to criticism about the nation’s rising debt profile, said the government was borrowing ‘sensibly and responsibly’.
According to her, the government only borrowed to invest in infrastructure that would later yield revenue.
“We are borrowing sensibly responsibly to invest on infrastructures in rail and other infrastructures like rail.
“These investments will make returns in future. If we do not do these investments, we will regret. These investments will return revenue in the future,” Ahmed said.
The Minister stated this at a press briefing organized in Abuja, the nation’s capital, to give further insight into the recent Gross Domestic Product estimates for Q2 2021 published by the National Bureau of Statistics.
She was joined by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed; Minister of State for Finance, Budget and National Planning, Clem Agba; and the new Statistician-General of the Federation, Simon Harry.
On Nigeria’s GDP for Q2, 2021, the Minister said the NBS’ report indicated that the nations’ economy grew by 5.01 percent, noting that it is the strongest real GDP growth since Q4 2014.
She said the economy report would have been better if not for the security challenges and other bottlenecks which affected the agricultural sector.
She said, “Broadly speaking, the services sector recorded a strong performance growing at 9.27 per cent during the quarter representing the fastest growth in the services sector since 2010.”
Ahmed said 42 out of 46 economic activities expanded during the quarter compared to only 13 at the same time last year, while 37 activities performed better than they did last quarter.
