DMO forecloses debt relief for states
By Sanya Adejokun,
Senior
Correspondent, Abuja
The Federal
Government has rebuffed appeals by some states asking for moratorium on the
payment of their external debt obligations.
Director-General of
the Debt Management Office (DMO), Dr. Mansur Mukhtar said on Tuesday while
reacting to pleas by states that government should halt further deductions from
their monthly allocations to service external debt in view of the cash crunch
they currently face.
President Olusegun
Obasanjo had succumbed to pressures by some state governors shortly before the
general elections in 2003 to suspend further deductions from the monthly
statutory allocations from the federation account until June this year.
Mansur said when the
demand were presented, the DMO looked at the individual cases in collaboration
with the then Minister of Finance, Mallam Adamu Ciroma, and recommended that
genuine ones be approved while the rest be thrown away and Obasanjo
consequently granted his approval.
The DMO chief said
the relief is no longer possible as it shot the portion of government’s
external debt portion to 85 per cent from 75 per cent.
He said the Budget
Office has now declared that it would not increase the allocation for debt
service in the 2005 budget to accommodate fresh requests.
The session that is
part of the two-day national stakeholders’ workshop that opened on
Monday, most of the representatives of the states decried the less than
satisfactory manner that the DMO have handled the external debt reconciliation
issue among states carved out of each other.
