ABUJA — The minister of finance, Zainab Ahmed, has justified the FG’s thirst for taking foreign loans amidst dwindling revenue and a low standard of living generally for Nigerians.
In the government’s defense, the minister said the loans taken are directed towards investment that will be beneficial to the country.
According to her, the government is simply dedicated to catering to the country’s infrastructural needs.
Zainab justified the move at a press conference addressing the recent report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on the growth of the economy.
She claimed that ignoring the country’s infrastructural needs will be unreasonable.
“We are borrowing sensibly and we are investing in rail and other infrastructure..
“If we do not do these investments, we will regret. [These] investments will return revenue in the future.
“The 2021 second-quarter growth reflects better economic performance compared to the same quarter last year. The same quarter last year, we had negative growth of -6.10 percent. It is also better than the first quarter of 2021.
However, the minister asserted that the loans
“The service sector recorded a strong performance, growing by 9.27 percent this reporting quarter, representing the fastest growth in this sector since 2010.
“The second-quarter growth of 2021 would have been much stronger than the 5.01 percent but for agriculture that recorded a slightly lower growth.
“A number of bottlenecks within the system including insecurity which has negatively affected the sector negatively. Also, the industrial sector slowed down to -1.3 percent,” she said.
As of March 2021, Nigeria’s total public debt had hit N33.1 trillion.
Many have expressed concern about the rate at which the government is borrowing to finance infrastructure projects.
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