Highly Indebted States: Lagos Debt Hits N1.043trn in 2018- Investigation

Highly Indebted States:

Highly Indebted States: Lagos Debt Hits N1.043trn in
2018- Investigation
… High Indebted States: Lagos, Rivers, Osun, Kaduna,
Imo
.… Low Indebted States: Yobe, Jigawa, Kwara, Ondo,
Ebonyi

Lagos State, South West Nigeria, is number one among the Highly
Indebted States in Nigeria in both external and domestic debts with
N1.043 trillion in 2018, in a new report by the Economic
Confidential.

While the external debt stock of Lagos amounts to N513.514
billion, the local debt stock settled at N530.243 billion.

In a meticulous investigation just concluded by a team of
Economic Confidential researchers on Annual High Indebted States
(AHIS) on External and Domestic Debt, the amount owed by Lagos
State represents about twenty (20) percent of the total debts owed
by the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) which is
N5.376 trillion in 2018.

Among the front runners in the highly indebted states for the
external debt stock include Edo, Kaduna, Cross River and Bauchi
with $276.25m (N99.45bn), $227.25m (N81.81bn), $188.77m (N67.95bn),
and $133.93m (N48.21bn) respectively.

Investigations further reveal that among the first five highly
indebted states in the local debt stock saw Lagos emerging tops
with N530.243 billion, followed by Delta state with N228.805
billion, Rivers with N225.592 billion, Akwa Ibom state with
N198.663 billion and Cross River with N167.955 billion.

The report further shows that outside Lagos state that is
leading the pack, Rivers state is second with N253.772 billion,
Delta comes to third position with N251.589 billion, followed by
Cross River in the fourth position with N235.914 billion and the
fifth position was grabbed by Akwa Ibom with N215.099 billion.

The investigation also brought to the fore that five states made
the list of least indebted states in the external debt stock with
Taraba state having $21.611m (N7.780bn), followed by Borno with
$21.618m(N7.782bn), and Yobe state with $27.486m(N9.895bn) all in
North Eastern Nigeria.

The remaining two states of Plateau and Kogi from North Central
Nigeria have external debt stock of $28.874m (N10.394bn) and
$31.584m (N11.370bn) respectively.

Of the 36 states of the federation, five (5) states account for
the lowest in both domestic and external debts. They are: Yobe,
Jigawa, Sokoto, Katsina and Niger.

Yobe state has a total of N37.667 billion, Jigawa N46.586
billion, Sokoto with N52.723 billion, while Katsina and Niger
states have N53.220 billion and N63.915 billion respectively.

Though the Federal Capital Territory is not rated among the 36
states of the federation, its external debt profile for 2018 is
$31.848 million(N11.465bn) while the domestic debt is N164.245bn
bringing a total of its external and domestic debts to
N175.710bn.

The report is coming at a time when several states in the
country are backward in terms of internally generated revenue to
execute projects that would touch lives apart from the fact that
most of these states rely heavily on handouts from the monthly
federal allocations from the Federation Account Allocation
Committee (FAAC).

Recall that Economic Confidential recently published a report
detailing each states’ revenue generation profile in comparison to
their federal allocations and concluded that many states cannot
survive without federation accounts, a development regarded as a
misnomer in the current economic realities.

The Table of States Indebtedness: https://economicconfidential.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Economic-Confidential-States-Indebtedness-2018.pdf^[1]

NOTE: Economic Confidential is a sister publication of the
PRNigeria

By PRNigeria