The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed has said the $3bn loan being sought by the Federal Government from the World Bank would be deployed for reforms in the power sector.

She said this during an interview with journalists on the sidelines of the World Bank/International Monetary Fund meetings holding in Washington DC, United States.

Ahmed, who is leading the Federal Government’s delegation to the meeting said she would be holding further discussions with the management of the Bank to present how the fund would be disbursed for the project.

She said based on the plan of the Federal Government for the power sector, the loan would be used for the development of transmission and distribution networks to enhance the delivery of electricity.

Ahmed also said the loan would be used in addressing some of the challenges that the country is currently facing in the power sector.

She said, “There is a proposed $2.5bn to $3bn facility for the power sector development programme in Nigeria and this will include development of the transmission networks and the distribution networks as well as removing the challenges that we currently have now in the electricity sector.

We are going to have a full meeting to discuss the power sector recovery programme and back home we have been working a great deal with the World Bank to design how this programme will be implemented.

So we have an opportunity now to have a direct meeting with the leadership of the bank and to tell them the plan we have and how much we need from one to five years.

The finance minister explained that the government would be pushing for the disbursement of the $3bn facility in two tranches of $1.5bn each.

When asked to comment on concerns being raised by the IMF about Nigeria’s debt which stands at N25.7tn the finance minister insists that Nigeria does not have a debt problem.

She said what the government needed to do is to increase its revenue-generating capacity in order to boost the revenue to about 50 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.

She said with Nigeria’s current revenue to GDP ratio standing at just 19 per cent, it’s underperformance is significantly straining the government’s ability to service its debt obligation.

The minister said, “Nigeria does not have a debt problem. What we have is a revenue problem.

Our revenue to GDP is still one of the lowest among countries that are comparable to us. It’s about 19 per cent of GDP and what the World Bank and IMF recommended is about 50 per cent of GDP for countries that are our size. We are not there yet. What we have is a revenue problem.

The underperformance of our revenue is causing a significant strain in our ability to service debt and to service government day-to-day recurrent expenditure and that is why all the work we are doing at the ministry of finance is concentrating on driving the increase in revenue.

When asked why the Federal Government decided to increase the revenue projection in the 2020 budget to N8.9tn at a time when government revenue performance is less than 60 per cent, she said a lot of measures are being put in place to correct the anomaly.



Read more here : https://maniagist.com/2019/10/17/why-nigeria-is-borrowing-fresh-3bn-from-world-bank-minister-of-finance/

OK, so na our low revenue be the problem, is that why the government is trying to tax us out of existence?

keep borrowing ,time will come when all our budget will go to dept services

Now the super-clueless Buhari government will always run to the world bank for loan but will find their statistical indices of assessment unacceptable.

Always lying as usual about a phantom increase on revenues(TSA, NNPC/FIRS/NPA/ Customs returns etc) yet this clueless regime is taxing and still borrowing monies.

Budget have no capital projects.So Nigeria is just borrowing to service debts? APC have mortgage Nigeria.So abeg can they sell this nation on e-bay & settle everybody?

Please when this is borrowed.....be sure you shared it 2 million per head among 200million population of Nigeria.....and use the balance for whatever you think is better for the country, because enough is enough of these borrowing without any good development/progress among the citizens.....there is so much hunger/hardship in the land of Nigeria (darkness area...that's the meaning of Nigeria)


who's gonna quote me wrong this time around?

bubu2019:
keep borrowing ,time will come when all our budget will go to dept services

...never mind, they have to share this one among 200 million population of the country at least 2 million per head via BVN

Thieves. .....nobody should lend to them again.

Okay

Empty skulls are leading the country.

To borrow is not the problem but to pay back. As it stand, we don’t have a debt problem but with the way we are borrowing, we may run into a serious problem soon if the right strategies are not put in place to manage the situation.

I want to believe the Gencos, discos and TCN are all involved in this loan request. They should develop a utilization template that will see the power sector generating the proceeds to pay back the loan. Debt servicing is already rating away a considerable chunk of our revenue. We cannot afford to put more strain on the dwindling revenue from oil and tax.

For how long can we continue to borrow..cos borrowing is always a WEIGHT.

Hmmm. At this point they better put it in the right projects.

Useless government. If these people doesn't take time, we will owe until our creditors would one day list Nigeria on New York Stock Market....

Are these people thinking about the fx risks associated with these international loans? The translation fx risk and associated crippling effects are real. It is the reason why our interest payments has ballooned in the past 5 years with less borrowing.

If we don't curtail all these excess borrowing, these foreign institutions will end up owning most of our great assets and will continue to dictate the direction of our economy

This people will sink this nation in debt
They are just bunch of spindrift
They will just pile the debt and leave the payment to incoming governments,this is an irresponsible government,all the lies of poor revenue is not true,look at the figures from customs,FIRS,and other revenue generating agencies,add taxes and income from sales of crude ,add all that to the borrowings and juxtaposed that with any tangible achievements of the government and see if it will tally.
This one no be government abeg

[img]https://images./1FppCkPr1ifEVB94dPVRyi.jpg[/img]

Borrowing again?

Mrs. Okonjo Iweala would not encourage the government of the day to keep borrowing like these.

Mrs. Zainab Ahmed has failed as the Finance Minister.

Worst Govt Ever !!!!! Yes quote me anywhere

SarkinYarki:
Worst Govt Ever !!!!! Yes quote me anywhere

I say quote me anywhere

SarkinYarki:


I say quote me anywhere

I say quote me anywhere Buhari is The worst

This woman must really like borrowing. Borrow borrow make me rich.

Power reform ko, power deform ni.

No single minister in that cabinet has the mental capacity to think out of the box.

Nigerian leaders always think that throwing money at a problem is always the solution. They never learn.

It's just the same old borrow, borrow, borrow. Run a nation's economy on borrowed funds. This finance minister is already a failure. I can see and smell it in the air.

uboma:
Mrs. Okonjo Iweala would not encourage the government of the day to keep borrowing like these.

Mrs. Zainab Ahmed has failed as the Finance Minister.

Okonjo Iweala was just as terrible if not worse.

After Obasanjo cleared Nigeria's debt guess who plunged us into more debt again? The Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr.Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

uboma:
Mrs. Okonjo Iweala would not encourage the government of the day to keep borrowing like these.

Mrs. Zainab Ahmed has failed as the Finance Minister.

Are you talking about the same Okonjo Iweala that was borrowing to pay salaries as at 2014? Bro, forget o, they are all the same.

Because oil is at $59...and we need it at $140 per barrel before we can avoid taking loans.

(And for all you Buhari defenders, that is why GEJ and Yaradua borrowed too).

That is why Nigeria needs to be free from oil.

FrLukas:


Okonjo Iweala was just as terrible if not worse.

After Obasanjo cleared Nigeria's debt guess who plunged us into more debt again? The Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr.Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

seunmsg:


Are you talking about the same Okonjo Iweala that was borrowing to pay salaries as at 2014? Bro, forget o, they are all the same.

The reason why we borrow is simple.

Oil has never been high enough for Nigeria to earn enough money. Except for a period in 2008 when oil was above $130 per barrel.

That's why we have to go industrial. But since that involves removing subsides...

PoliticalWitch:
Because oil is at $59...and we need it at $140 per barrel before we can avoid taking loans.

(And for all you Buhari defenders, that is why GEJ and Yaradua borrowed too).

That is why Nigeria needs to be free from oil.

Who you gonna call? Iranian drones and lunatic us presidents.

PoliticalWitch:



The reason why we borrow is simple.

Oil has never been high enough for Nigeria to earn enough money. Except for a period in 2008 when oil was above $130 per barrel.

That's why we have to go industrial. But since that involves removing subsides...

The reason why we borrow is simple. Greed. There are nations that don't have crude oil and yet are the ones lending to other nations.

Those nations lending to other nations, I guess their own citizens have two heads, right?

We borrow money only to have it embezzled.

Since we've been borrowing money what exactly has changed in Nigeria? I'll tell you what has changed. The political class pay themselves fatter allowances. That's what has changed.

The oil revenue Nigeria gets in a year is enough to turn Nigeria into another UAE in less than 5 years. Jonathan earned the highest during his tenure with a barrel @ $140. We ended up with having to borrow to pay salaries and the nation's coffers less than how he met it.