DMO Disclaims Media Report on 23 States Exceeding Borrowing Limits

Ndubuisi Francis in Abuja
The Debt Management Office (DMO) has dissociated itself from a recent newspaper report that 23 states of the federation overshot their borrowing threshold as permitted by law.

In a disclaimer captioned: ‘Re: 23 States Exceeded Borrowing Limits – FRC’, the DMO said its attention had been drawn to the publication by a national daily.

According to the DMO, in the publication in question, which was said to be based on a report of the Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) “on the states and indebtedness”, 23 states had borrowed more than 50 per cent of their annual statutory allocations by 2015.

The states were listed as Lagos, Kaduna, Cross River, Gombe, Ekiti, Edo, Ondo, Oyo, Abia, Ogun, Imo, Zamfara, Adamawa, Taraba, Kebbi, Enugu, Bauchi, Nasarawa, Kano, Benue, Kwara, Katsina and Sokoto.
“The said publication also made reference to the DMO’s guidelines on sub-national borrowings. For the avoidance of doubt, the DMO wishes to dissociate itself from the publication.

“Neither the quoted guideline (borrowed more than 50 per cent of their annual statutory allocation) nor the conclusion of the FRC as stated in the publication, originated from the DMO.

“Interested members of the public can access the DMO’s Revised External and Domestic Borrowing Guidelines for the federal and state governments and their agencies (2012) with particular reference to Section F which is titled: ‘Domestic Borrowing by States and their Agencies,’ the DMO said in the disclaimer.