DMO DG , Patricia Oniha

By Ngozi Onyeakusi—The Debt Management Office, DMO, has cautioned the Federal Government against additional borrowing, saying 73.5 per cent of revenue generated this year will be used to service debt. According to the DMO, the projected FGN Debt Service to Revenue ratio of 73.5 per cent for 2023 is high and cannot support higher levels of borrowing, and is also a threat to debt sustainability. Consequently, the DMO advised the FG to focus on increasing revenue generation, stressing that attaining a sustainable Debt Service-to-Revenue ratio will require increasing FGN revenue from N10.49 trillion projected in 2023 budget to about N15.5 trillion. It gave this warning as part of recommendations to the Federal Government, following analysis of the nation’s debt profile in 2022. According to the DMO in the report of the Annual National Market Access Country (MAC) Debt Sustainability Analysis, “the analysis of the results of 2022 MAC-DSA shows that the Total Public Debt-to-GDP ratio is projected to increase to 37.1 per cent in 2023, relative to 23.4 per cent as at September 2022, due to the inclusion of the N8.80 trillion (new borrowings) for the year 2023, the FGN Ways and Means at the CBN of over N23 trillion and estimated Promissory Notes issuance of N2.87 trillion in the debt stock.