Total foreign and domestic debt stocks of the federal and the 36 states governments as at December 31, 2016 stood at about $11.41 billion and N14.02 trillion respectively, National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, reported on Tuesday.

The statistics agency in its latest Nigerian Domestic and Foreign Debt report, 2016 said further disaggregation showed that $7.99 billion of the country’s foreign debt were from multilateral agencies; $198.25 million were bilateral (AFD) and $3.22 billion from the Exim bank of China credited to the Federal Government account.

The report said the federal government’s debt accounted for over 68.72 per cent of Nigeria’s total foreign debt outlay, while all the 36 states and the Federal Capital territory, FCT, accounted for the balance 31.28 per cent.

Equally, the total federal government debt, the report said, represented about 78.89 per cent of the country’s total domestic debt, with the states and the FCT making up the 21.11 per cent balance.

Data on the domestic debt stock by instruments, showed about N7.56 trillion, or 68.41 per cent of the total debt stock were in federal government bonds; N3.28 trillion, or 29.64 per cent in treasury bills and N215.99 million, or 1.95 per cent in treasury bonds.

Details of the foreign debts, on a state-by-state basis, showed Lagos State with the highest profile of $1.381 billion, or 38.7 per cent, among the 36 states and the FCT; followed by Kaduna with $222.881 million, or 6.25 per cent, Edo $183.64 million, or 5.15 per cent, Cross River $114.996 million, or 3.22 per cent and Ogun $103.416 million, or 2.9 per cent.

On the domestic front, Lagos State also topped among the 36 states and the FCT, accounting for 10.54 per cent of the total debts (about N311.76 billion), followed by Delta with N241.2 billion, or 8.15 per cent; Akwa Ibom N155.4 billion, or 5.25 per cent; FCT N152.8 billion, or 5.16 per cent and Osun N147.07 billion, or 4.97 per cent.

PT