The naira has continued its downward trend, falling to N702 per dollar at the parallel market on yesterday. Ana;ysts warn that, extension to the official exchange rate may impact service negatively.
The figure represents N10 or 1.4 percent depreciation compared to the N692 it traded last week.
Bureaux De Change (BDC) operators in Lagos and Abuja, who spoke to TheCable, said that there is high demand for foreign currency in the street market.
The street traders, popularly known as ‘abokis‘ put the buying price of the dollar at N690 and the selling price at N700-N702, leaving a profit margin of N10-N12.
Last month, the naira weakened to N707 a dollar. It later strengthened to N670 after security operatives raided a BDC hub in Abuja.
Nigeria in the past 10 years has spent a whopping sum of N15.22trillion to service its domestic and external debts, data gathered on the official website of Debt Management Office (DMO) has revealed.
Analysis of the DMO numbers showed that domestic debt service contributed 88.7per cent or N13.5trillion, while external debt interest/service contributed 11.35 per cent or N1.73 trillion ($5.3 billion) out of the N15.1trillion total debt services between 2012 and 2021.
A further check by Economic Confidential revealed that the federal government in 10 years has consistently paid interest on its Nigerian Treasury Bills (NTB), FGN Bonds, Sukuk Bonds, Saving Bonds and Nigerian Treasury Bonds, while interest on Multilateral, Eurobond borrowings among others continued to increase steadily.
The DMO data revealed that interest on NTBs and FGN Bonds, two major instruments the government used in borrowing funds to bridge the budget deficit, amounted to N3.4trillion and N9.27trillion in 10 years, respectively.
The external debt interest/service on Multilateral and Eurobond, two major sources the federal government borrowed funds from foreign financial institutions amounted to $940.86million and $3.42billion in the years under consideration.
The multilateral financial institutions FG pays interest/service on loans borrowed are: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Africa Dev. Bank, International Fund for Agric. Dev., Africa Dev. Fund, European Dev. Fund, Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA), among others.
A further look at the data showed that FG domestic debt stock by Instrument moved to N19.24trillion as at December 31st, 2021 from N6.54trillion reported by DMO in 2012, while Nigeria’s External Debt Stock closed 2021 at $38.391million from $6.527million in 2012.
In addition, Nigeria’s total public debt portfolio as at December 31, 2021 stood at $95.779 million (external) and N39.556billion (domestic) from $48,496.23 (foreign) and N7,554,258.00 (domestic) as of December 31, 2012.
