Nigeria who obtained a $2.4bn loan from World Bank in 2018, is seeking another $2.5bn loan from the World Apex bank.
Hafez Ghanem, the Vice-President for the African Division of the World Bank, made this known to Bloomberg reporters. Ghanem said “We’re talking about a new set of programs of about the same amount, it should be around $2.5bn”
Nigeria’s debt appears to be on the increase, in the Buhari led administration with foreign loans at $25.6b billion and domestic debt at $55.6 billion.
The nation also suffers a setback in generating revenue as the output and price of oil fell in recent years. Nigeria’s main source of revenue is in its crude oil.
Since Oil prices fell in the last five years, the country has been finding it difficult to generate revenue from other sectors because of its over-dependence on crude oil.
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This is the major reason Nigeria keeps seeking credit, loans with low interest and long repayments period from World financial institutions such as World Bank and the African Development Bank to lessen its financial burden.
“The current economic performance of Nigeria is not enough to reduce poverty, we need to accelerate growth”, Ghanem said.
It’s important to resolve the problems of the power sector in Nigeria to bring in more investments, because you need to bring down the cost of power to make the economy more competitive for the development of industries.”
Furthermore, he said “The World Bank is supporting digital transformation in Nigeria because of its potential ability to transform other areas of the economy including industry, agriculture and services,
“Nigeria has a comparative advantage in that area because of the youth, a majority of the population is young,” he said. “So if we want to create jobs, we need to invest much more in the digital economy”, he added