Nigeria’s debt to China increased from $3.93bn as of June 30, 2022, to $4.73bn as of June 30, 2023, showing an increase of $800m in one year.
It is an increase of 20.36 per cent from the second quarter of 2022 to Q2 2023, according to an analysis of the external debt stock data from the Debt Management Office.
Although the Federal Government has been chiefly secretive about the terms of the agreement of its China loans, the DMO has made some statements on them in the past.
In a statement in June 2020, the DMO said, “The total borrowings from China of $3.121bn as of March 31, 2020, are concessional loans with interest rates of 2.5 per cent per annum, tenor of 20 years and grace period (moratorium) of seven years.”
According to the DMO, the terms are compliant with the provisions of Section 41 (1a) of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007.
In addition, the low interest rate reduces the interest cost to the government while the long tenor enables the repayment of the principal sum of the loans over many years.
In a document titled ‘Status of Chinese loans as at September 30, 2021’, the DMO disclosed that 15 projects were funded by the loans acquired from China. These projects range from water supply, power generation, railways, airport terminals, and communication to agricultural processing.