By Matthew Denis
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has ranked Kwara State as 28th among the 36 states on the domestic debt profile for 2018.
From the statistics released on Wednesday, Kwara incurred a total of N59,135,900,168.96 debt, making it one of the states with least a debt profile.
Other states with low debt profile includes Ebonyi, Enugu, Ondo, Niger, Sokoto, Jigawa, Anambra, Kastina and Yobe states.
However, Lagos State has the highest foreign debt profile among the thirty-six states and the FCT accounting for 5.64% while Edo (1.09%), Kaduna (.0.90%) and Cross River (0.75%) followed closely.
Similarly, total domestic debt was N16.63 trillion with Lagos accounting for 3.19% of the total domestic debt stock while Yobe State has the least debt stock in this category with a contribution of 0.17% to the total domestic debt stock.
Both federal and states Debt Stock data as at 31st December 2018 reflected that the country’s foreign and domestic debts stood at $25.27bn and N16.63trn respectively.
Further disaggregation of Nigeria’s foreign debt showed that $11.01bn of the debt was multilateral; $344.63m was bilateral (AFD) and another $2.75bn bilateral from the Exim Bank of China, JICA, India and KFW while $11.17bn was commercial which are basically Eurobonds and Diaspora Bonds.
Federal Government Domestic Debt Stock by Instrument as at December 31, 2018 TOTAL 12,774,405,701,997.00 100.00%
Domestic debt data for the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory as at December 31, 2018 the amount is listed below in naira provisional.
Meanwhile, in his reaction, the Kwara State Commissioner of Planning and Economic Development, Alhaji Wasiu Odewale said “we’re least among the indebted States. We equally gave potentials to pay back given our level of IGR growth.
According to him, the figure N59.1b, made up of the followings:
1. Budget support – N16.9b
2. Salary bailout – N4.02b
3. FGN bond – N15.4b
4. ECA loan – N9.4b
5. Comm Bank loans – N463m
6. CACs (Agric Credit) – N727m
7. CBN CACs (ABP) – N808m
8. Contractors arrears – N1.4b
9. Pension & Gratuity – N10.1b
