Government increased spending and borrowing to fund almost half of it signals trouble for investors in the bonds of Africa’s biggest oil producer, Bloomberg reports.
Nigeria’s naira debt has lost 3.6 percent in dollar terms this year, the most after Russia, Colombia and Mexico’s local bonds among 31 emerging nations tracked by Bloomberg.
Average yields have jumped 119 basis points to 11.89 percent since the end of December. More losses may be in store, according to Barclays Plc.
President Muhammadu Buhari is attempting to counter an economic slowdown as crude prices plunged to 12-year lows by increasing government spending about 20 percent in 2016 to $31 billion.
His administration says it will partly plug the $15 billion deficit with 900 billion naira ($4.5 billion) of extra debt issuance on local markets, alongside $5 billion of external funding. What will make his task even harder is the absence of foreign investors, who fled Nigeria last year in anticipation of a currency devaluation they see as inevitable but which the government is avoiding.
“If you look at the larger fiscal gap and the planned increase in issuance, you’d expect some pressure on yields,” Ridle Markus, an Africa strategist at Barclays’ South African unit, said by phone from Johannesburg on Tuesday. “It will mostly be local investors that participate. I can’t see foreigners returning” without a devaluation, he said.
