The federal government as at April, 2022 has borrowed about N19.01 trillion from the Central Bank of Nigeria to finance the country’s budget deficit of N30.58 trillion in the last seven years.
Recall that the Nigerian government has been running a fiscal deficit for at least ten years (from 2012 to 2021), however, the latest 2021 deficit is 22 per cent higher than the N5.98 trillion deficit recorded in 2020.
From a 2022 perspective, a number of factors suggest the FG’s expenditure is likely to outpace its revenue at a record pace again.
The Nigerian government spent $2.1 billion on foreign debt servicing in 2021, significantly higher than the $1.6 billion and $1.3 billion incurred in 2020 and 2021.
It was gathered that the federal government budget deficits were largely financed from the Ways and Means from the CBN, which grew to N19.01 trillion in April 2022 from N648.26 billion as of June 2015.
This is aside from the domestic debt market and International Capital Market, bilateral and multilateral agencies, basically to plug the budget deficit in the period under review.
The deficits were incurred from the third quarter of 2015 and the first four months of 2022 as the budget expenditure of the government hit N54.98 trillion within the seven years period.
