According to the Senate, over 40 per cent of projects to be executed were not captured in the 2012 budget estimate indicating that the budget may have been doctored. Budget padding and corruption has led to rising poverty in the country with over 112 million Nigerians said to be under the poverty line.
Early in January, the federal government increased pump price of fuel from N65 to N140 a litre in a bid to finance its subsidy reinvestment and empowerment programme. The price was later adjusted downward to N97 per litre after a long drawn battle between labour, civil society groups and government which paralysed the economy for about two weeks.
Also yesterday, President Goodluck Jonathan asked the Senate to give approval for Nigeria to borrow ($7.905 billion) N1.264 trillion from World Bank and four other foreign banks to enable him fund the transformation programme of the Federal Government in the next three years. The amount when borrowed will increase the nation's external debt from the present figure of $5.67billion or just 2.5 per cent of estimated GDP to $13.575 billion by 2015.
Nigeria's external debt, which stood at $32 billion in 2005 before the exit from the Paris club of creditors in 2006, dropped to $5.67 billion in 2011. The current figure of $5.67 billion includes the external borrowings of state governments, which are necessarily guaranteed by the federal government and representes $2.17billion of the total. Ratings agencies prefer to adjust their definition of public external indebtedness for official reserves.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201202150676.html
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