The President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration accrued a total debt profile of N2.2 trillion in one year.
Speaking on the rise in the nation’s debt profile, the Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun said: “I guess it would have been used to fund the budget and whatever government is spending money on.”
Kemi Adeosun who simply guessed what the government had done with the huge sum further added that the government will continue to pump money into infrastructural developments such as road, power and railway among others.
However, in line with the borrowing scheme of the Federal Government, the Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, through its General Secretary, Dr. Peter Ozo-Eson, while speaking to Punch has urged the Federal Government to invest the borrowed money to stimulate the nation’s economy.
Ozo-Eson said: “Well, with the economy in recession, we have all agreed from the beginning, we need a stimulus to turn the economy around. This is why the 2016 budget is hugely a deficit budget. That implies that you need to borrow in order to create that stimulus. It is the use to which we put what is borrowed that is important.
“If we plough it heavily into infrastructure and in creating employment, in the long run and in the medium- term, it will help to revamp the economy and then restore balance to fiscal operations. So we do not think that borrowing is bad, particularly in the period in which we have to stimulate the economy.”