NIGERIA has reached its limit of external borrowing and will not consider taking any foreign loan unless it is absolutely necessary, the Director-General of the Debt Management Office (DMO), Dr Abraham Nwankwo, has said.

Dr Nwankwo, declaring open a one-week Debt Sustainability Analysis workshop on Monday, in Abuja, stated that although the standard debt to Gross Domestic Product ratio globally was 40 per cent, Nigeria had conservatively put its own debt to GDP ratio at 25 per cent to avoid pilling up unnecessary debts.

As of the last quarter of 2010, he said the total external loan for Nigeria stood at $4.5billion (about 18 per cent of the GDP) while the domestic debt was N2 trillion.

The DMO boss (recognising the fact that there was still a very wide infrastructure gap and thus needed enormous resources to bridge), said the government was considering a situation where private fund would be used to fund public projects under a special Public Private Partnership arrangement.

He said the Federal Government would, however, fulfil its own part of the bargain by guaranteeing such foreign loans taken by the private sector for infrastructural development .

Disclosing that the Debt Sustainability Analysis was not just a technical exercise, Dr Nwankwo said it was the responsibility of all stakeholders to relate the debt sustainability figure with the reality of the economy and analyse it with the resources available.

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