The budget deficit under President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration would hit record high at N55.3 trillion in eight years, with the passage of N21.83 trillion 2023 budget whose deficit is over N10 trillion, LEADERSHIP Weekend can exclusively reveal.
This is just as economists have asked the Nigerian government to heed warnings from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank over the effects of the country’s rising debt, particularly borrowings from the Central Bank of Nigeria through ways and means, which they say leading to a rise in inflation, eroding the value of the naira and depleting the county’s foreign reserves.
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The economists who spoke with LEADERSHIP Weekend said the federal government has pronounced its own unworthy of credit in the international market by borrowing from the CBN, which is nothing but printing money and pumping it into the system.
According to the economists, the country’s borrowing has now hit a brick wall and it has to stop borrowing. The effects, they believe, are now being felt with the country unable to issue bonds in the international market and has overstretched itself in the local market, raising questions on how the close N12trn deficit in the 2023 budget will be financed.
The only other option left for the government is to abandon its penchant for borrowing and increase its revenue profile by taxing businesses and the income of all Nigerians.
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An assessment LEADERSHIP Weekend show that every Nigerian would have pay N60,000 in extra taxes to fund the N12trn deficit in the budget.
And by the time Muhammadu Buhari leaves office on May, 29 when the debt management office says the public debt would have reached N77trn, every Nigerian by then would owe N385,000.
