Aug. 30, 2021

Federal Government will launch its planned Eurobond issue on Oct. 11, its finance minister, Zainab Ahmed said on Monday.

According to her the country would hold roadshows for the dollar-denominated issuance, which aims to raise roughly $3 billion, in Lagos and New York.

The government is also targeting raising the same amount via multilateral and bilateral borrowing to fund its 2021 budget deficit.

“We have an approval in the 2021 budget to fund the budget deficit 50% locally and 50% externally,” Ahmed said.

“We are planning to do about half of that in eurobonds and the other half through other windows such as multilateral and bilateral sources.”

Parliament in July approved external borrowing of roughly $6.2 billion.

Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, is struggling to boost growth after exiting its second recession since 2016 in the fourth quarter of last year. Its incoming statistician-general has said the nation is targeting gross domestic product growth above 5% for 2021.

Its economy grew 5.01% in the second quarter, according to statistics released last week, as an easing of COVID-19 lockdown measures and an increase in vaccinations boosted commercial activities. However, persistently high inflation has dogged the nation.

REUTERS