The Minister of Finance, Budget and National
Planning, Zainab Ahmed, who disclosed this during an interview on Bloomberg TV
on Thursday said that the $3bn constituted half of the amount needed from
external borrowings to fund the 2021 budget deficit.
Ahmed said, “We should be going to the market
in the second week of October. The government has approved to raise $6.1bn from
overseas. So we are looking at doing half of that in the Eurobond market and
the other half from bilateral and multilateral sources. Depending on how the
market goes, maybe we can do a little bit more.’’
The minister noted that the Federal Government
was targeting single-digit inflation by 2023.
She also said the $3.3bn Special Drawing
Rights from the International Monetary Fund had helped to boost the country’s
external reserves and will help stabilise the naira.
She said, “We certainly feel we have passed
the worst of it. Our projection is that inflation will continue to go down
throughout 2021 and 2022. Our target is to get to single-digit inflation by
2023.”
“The central bank is doing everything within
limited constraints to stabilise the currency. The SDR of $3.35bn just received
from the International Monetary Fund have helped shore up the reserves and will
help stabilise the currency.
“Also, the withdrawal by the central bank of
funding to unauthorised dealers will increase supply to the formal market to
meet demand.”
On the country’s debt, she said, ‘’The
government is now working to reduce its debt-service burden by increasing
revenue, restructuring its debt portfolio through the conversion of expensive
short-term notes into longer tenors, and also reducing its overall borrowing.
“Our target is to triple revenues from about
eight per cent of the Gross Domestic Product to 15 per cent, and also grow the
economy by seven per cent.”