Contrary to a newspaper report, the Debt Management Office (DMO) on Wednesday said Nigeria has debt management strategy, which was approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC).
A statement by the agency, signed by Chinenye Onu, quoted its Director-General, Ms. Patience Oniha, as saying strategy approved in June 2016 has an expiry date of December 2019.
“The document is available on https://www.dmo.gov.ng/publications/other-publications/debt-management-strategy,” was quoted as saying.
She further assured that the Muhammadu Buhari administration was implementing the nation’s robust debt management strategy in full.
The plan, she added, became necessary due to a combination of developments in the macro-economy, the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) and the need to come up with creative ways to fund the Government in the face of lower Revenues.
In her view, the old pattern for preparing a Strategic Plan, she added, would have been grossly inadequate.
Oniha described the newspaper publication as “absolutely false and the claim that they obtained a confirmation from the Director-General of the Debt Management Office to the effect that the DMO was ‘working on it’ is also very wrong.
“The enquiry by the newspaper was on the DMO’s Strategic Plan (an institutional plan) and not the Public Debt Management Strategy. This action amounts to deception and manipulation of information.
“There is a difference between the Debt Management Strategy and the DMO’s Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan is a statement of the institution’s Goals and Objectives as well as, the activities that will enable their achievements.
“It covers issues such as Human Resources, Technology, and Market Development amongst others. This contrasts very sharply with the Public Debt Management Strategy which is entirely about the strategies for managing the public debt to ensure that borrowing is prudent and the public debt is sustainable.”
The DMO Director-General disclosed that a new Strategic Plan that would deliver a new, robust and all-encompassing strategy was at its final stage of preparation.
She said further that a new Strategic Plan for the DMO had to be prepared in a holistic manner to incorporate these developments and expectations.
