N41.6tr debt: Nigeria Fails Disclosure Rule set for IDA counties – World Bank

The World Bank has announced that Nigeria has failed to meet full disclosure rating conditions on debt reporting over the past three years.

Also,  Debt Management Office (DMO) data showed that the country’s total public debt stock stood at N41.60 trillion or $100.07 billion as at March 31, 2022.

According to Report, the World Bank has in the last three years, been monitoring how transparent Nigeria is in its debt reporting practices and found that it did not meet “full disclosure” policy it set for International Development Association (IDA) countries.

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The report in part read, “Global studies indicate that debt transparency directly contributes to higher credit ratings, lower borrowing costs, and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Hence, the debt management office took the strategic stance to focus on debt transparency efforts and took several actions to improve public debt reporting and disclosure.”

The bank accused Nigeria of failure to publish Annual Borrowing Plans (ABP), and insisted that guaranteed and non-guaranteed debts were not reported while information on recently contracted loans was also not provided.

These developments, the bank said, meant that Nigeria did not meet the “full disclosure” rating for every single one of the nine categories on the debt transparency Heat Map.

The bank further listed the debt transparency Heat Map as data accessibility, instrument coverage, sectoral coverage, information on the contracted loans, periodicity, time range, debt management strategy, annual borrowing plan and other debt statistics/ contingent liabilities (CLs).