The World Bank has revealed that Nigeria has failed to meet full disclosure rating conditions on debt reporting, monitored by it over the past three years.
The World Bank, which has been monitoring how transparent Nigeria is in its debt reporting practices, found that the country did not meet “full disclosure” policy it set for International Development Association (IDA) countries.
“Global studies indicate that debt transparency directly contributes to higher credit ratings, lower borrowing costs, and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Hence, the debt management office took the strategic stance to focus on debt transparency efforts and took several actions to improve public debt reporting and disclosure.”
The bank further accused Nigeria of failure to publish Annual Borrowing Plans (ABP), insisting also that guaranteed and non-guaranteed debts were not reported while information on recently contracted loans was also not provided.
According to the World Bank, Nigeria, from the developments, did not meet the “full disclosure” rating for every single one of the nine categories on the debt transparency Heat Map.
The bank further listed the debt transparency Heat Map as data accessibility, instrument coverage, sectoral coverage, information on the contracted loans, periodicity, time range, debt management strategy, annual borrowing plan and other debt statistics/ contingent liabilities (CLs).
Meanwhile, the Debt Management Office (DMO) data showed that the country’s total public debt stock stood at N41.60 trillion ($100.07 billion) as at March 31, 2022.
