The Budget Office in Nigeria has revealed that the Federal Government spent N5.78 trillion to service debt in the first nine months of last year.
On Monday, the budget office released its 2023 third quarter (Q3) budget implementation. It disclosed that the figure is higher than the projection of N4.91 trillion in the 2023 budget.
This represents an increase of N869.38 billion (17.68 percent).
The office said interest on ways and means during the period amounted to N1.69 trillion.
“The sum of N2,901.60 billion was used for domestic debt servicing, a difference of 430.27 billion (17.41 percent) from the prorated projection for the period, while N1,189.32 billion was spent on external debt servicing during the period under review”, the office said.
“A total of N1,225.73 trillion was released and cash-backed to MDAs for their 2023 capital projects and programmes during the period.
“Available fiscal data revealed that only N962.84 billion (78.56 percent) of the total amount released and cash-backed was utilized by MDAs as at 30 September, 2023″.
The budget office said the revenue and expenditure outturn of the government resulted in a fiscal deficit of N4.4 trillion between Q1 and Q3 last year.
According to the office, this is N4.29 trillion (49.32 percent) below the projected N8.7 trillion deficit for the reviewed period last year.
“It was however below the N5,991.12 billion deficit that was recorded in corresponding period of 2022,” the office said.
