The Nigerian Government plans to sell N135 billion worth of bonds in its July 12 auction, the Debt Management Office (DMO) has said.
According to the offer circular obtained from the website of Nigeria’s official debt managers on Wednesday, the DMO said it plans to sell N35 billion of bonds that it will retire in July 2021 at 14.50 per cent.
In addition, the debt managers said it will sell bonds worth N50 billion at 16.28 per cent to mature in March 2027; 20-year bonds valued at N50 billion will be sold at 16.24 per cent.
The circular said that all the bonds on offer are re-openings of previous issues.
Nigeria issues sovereign bonds monthly to support the local bond market, create a benchmark for corporate issuance and fund its budget deficit.
Data uploaded by the DMO on June 5 2017 showed that the country’s debt stock grossed N19.16 trillion as at March 31 2017, 13.48 per cent increase from the level it was as at September 30 2016.
The DMO’s data on debt stock revealed that Domestic debt of the Federal Government (FGN) accounted for the bulk of the debts, having comprised 84.56 per cent of the gross debt value.
Nigerian government was shown to be borrowing heavily from domestic lenders as FGN domestic debts represented 62.48 per cent of the total debts. The states, which borrowed primarily from local lenders, accounted for 15.44 per cent of all the country’s debts.
Hezron Atunde
