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Nigeria: IMF Clarifies Nation's Debt Service Position
This Day (Lagos) August 30, 2002
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) yesterday said that Nigeria is struggling to service its foreign debt but is not in default. "The basic information I have is that it is not a fact (that Nigeria is in default)," IMF spokesman Thomas Dawson told a news conference. "I think there was perhaps a bit of over reporting. Indeed, Nigeria is having a great deal of difficulty meeting payments this year. This is not news."
Dawson dismissed one report that Nigeria was late in payments to the IMF. "In as much as the IMF has no outstanding loan with Nigeria it is not a likely scenario," he said. The IMF was providing advice to the Nigerian authorities but had no assistance programme with the country, he said.
The Federal Government issued a statement Wednesday denying it had halted debt service payments, saying that it would seek to meet half of its obligations. Also Wednesday Finance Minister, Mallam Adamu Ciroma, told the British Broadca-sting Corporation (BBC) that Nigeria was forced to defer the repayment of its external debt because the National Assembly did not approve enough money for debt servicing. He urged the nation's creditors to wait for next year's budget. On Tuesday the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Joseph Sanusi, had told reporters that because of shrinking foreign exchange reserves "payments of external debt service, which was due and unpaid, were deferred." Nigeria owes $28 billion, mainly to foreign governments through bilateral deals overseen by the Paris Club of creditor nations.
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