In the final half of 2023, the Central Bank of Nigeria gave an additional N3.8 trillion in ways and means of borrowing to the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
According to Nairametrics, this is the provisional data published in the latest Statistics bulletin for the fourth quarter of 2023, which the central bank recently released.
The CBN’s provision data showed that the total figure rose from N4.4 trillion at the end of June 2023, meaning that the cumulative Ways and Means balances due by the government now stand at N8.2 trillion as of December 2023.
The figure contradicts claims by the Minister of Finance, Wale Edun, that Tinubu’s government has yet to borrow from CBN.
Edun said this when he spoke with journalists at the recently held Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington DC, United States.
Meanwhile, the Total Ways and Means balance as of May 2023, when the Tinubu administration took over, was N26.95 trillion.
However, the balances were securitized as part of the federal government’s domestic debt profile.
Further analysis showed that at the end of June 2023, it was N4.36 trillion, indicating that the prior month’s balances may have been moved to the Debt Management Office, the custodial of the country’s debt record.
However, from July 2023, the balances increased monthly to N4.5 trillion in July, then N5.1 trillion in August, crossing the N5.1 trillion mark for the first time.
By September, the total was N6.4 trillion, representing the largest monthly additional borrowing with about N1.3 trillion.
It climbed to N7.2 trillion in October before rising marginally to N7.6 trillion in November.
At the end of the year, in December, the total hit N8.21 trillion, suggesting that Ways and Means increased by 88 per cent in 6 months.