Zainab Ahmed, Finance Minister has revealed that the Federal Government has spent N2.02tr on servicing debt between January 2021 to June 2021.
She disclosed this while speaking at the 2022- 2024 2022-2024 medium-term expenditure framework/ fiscal strategy paper (MTEF/FSP) committee interactive session in Abuja on Monday, August 16.
Ahmed said the federal government’s retained revenue amounted to 67.3 percent of the target.
Last year, out of total revenue of N3.42 trillion, the federal government spent N3.34 trillion on debt servicing – implying that for every N100 earned as revenue, N97 was spent on debt servicing.
Given the breakdown, the minister said oil revenue was N492.44 billion, representing 49 percent performance, while the non-oil revenue totaled N778.18 trillion at 104.5 percent performance, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN). She added that companies’ income tax(CIT) and value-added tax (VAT) collections are ahead of the budget targets with N397.02 billion and N129 billion.
According to her, this represents 116.5 percent and 108.2 percent targets for the period.
She said;
“Of the expenditure, N2.02 trillion was for debt servicing, which is 35 percent of the Federal Government expenditures and N1.795 trillion for personnel cost. This is including pension at 30.9 percent of Federal Government revenue.”
As of June, N1.3 trillion, which represented 84.7 percent, had been released for capital expenditure.
