The Lagos Chamber of Industry (LCCI), has revealed that the Federal Government (FG) must seek creative solutions in solving its revenue challenge, rather than taking loans.
Gabriel Isahosa, the Deputy-President of LCCI made this submission following comments by the Director-General of the Debt Management Office (DMO), Patience Oniha, who spoke during the public presentation of the 2023 budget organised by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Dr Zainab Ahmed.
The debt office, recently, disclosed that Nigeria’s public debt burden might hit N77 trillion if the National Assembly approves the request by President Muhammadu Buhari, to restructure the Ways and Means Advances.
Fuming at the Nigerian government for taking such loans, the LCCI chief argued that government borrowing, especially when it is as frequent as it has been with the current administration, ends up stifling the private sector’s ability to take loans from the banking system.
His words: “The issue of sustainability is no longer being considered by the government. This government just wants to borrow its way out of the remaining term and then leave the problem for the next government. That’s just to put it mildly. So, the bigger picture of sustainability and structure will have to be addressed by the incoming government because the level of borrowing now is not sustainable by our revenue.
“As a country, we are not generating enough revenue to service our debts and still run a government. Since last year, we have been living on borrowed money because the debt servicing has crossed 100% of our revenue. If you look at our budget every year, when you look at the debt servicing, it is higher than the estimated revenue. So we just borrow on top of all that to run the government. That is what we are doing now. It is not sustainable.”
