A Professor of Financial Economics, Samson Edo, has cautioned the federal government against excessive foreign loans adding that its multiplier effects can push the nation’s economy into a “dangerous territory”.
Edo said Nigeria foreign borrowing pattern was drifting towards the fault line of South Africa and Egypt; who allocate 31 per cent of her annual national budget in 2017 to servicing foreign loans.
Edo also challenged African leaders to build investors’ confidence in the Capital markets and make them viable to raise bonds for projects financing.
He stated this while delivering the 212th inaugural lecture series of the University of Benin (Uniben), Edo State.
The lecture was tagged: “The worrisome cycle of external borrowing in Nigeria: How can domestic Capital market provider remedy”.
According to him, “50 percent of the nation’s debt was owed to International Development Association (IDA) and China EXIM Bank”.
He said Nigeria can obtain external loans to fund developmental projects, noting that such loans can export austerity into the nation in future “due to lack of financial discipline”.
Earlier, the Vice Chancellor of University of Benin, Prof. Faraday Orumwense, said the lecturer had been Capital analyst with the Nigerian Stock Exchange in Lagos before he joined the service of the University in 1996
