Jennifer Ugwueke
The Director-General of the Debt Management Office (DMO), Patience Oniha, said on Wednesday the Federal Government planned to repay a $500million Eurobond with funds raised from a domestic bond offering held in the last quarter of 2020.
The Eurobond is expected to mature this month.
She said the Government is also casting its glance around the foreign debt market for fresh issues by frontier markets.
Countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya, are certain to approach foreign capital markets in 2021 to offer bonds in anticipation that investors will have more appetite for risk-taking, according to the Institute of International Finance.
“The Nigerian Government also has its eyes on the conditions of international bond and does not see difficulties in sourcing dollars to repay the bond at expiration,” Oniha said.
Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy, is in the throes of its fiercest recession in four decades, following an oil crash, which has eroded its currency, sparked off a wide funding gap and triggered a shortage of dollar supply.
Its debt stock as of the third quarter of last year came to N32.223 trillion, N1.214 trillion or 3.91 percent bigger than the N31.009 trillion reported in the preceding quarter.