The Director-general of the Debt Management office, Patience Oniha, has revealed how much Nigeria owes China. In an interview with PremiumTimes, she said the loans were nothing to worry about as they were concessional loans.
“I know that last year there were a lot in the public space about borrowing from China. So all of the loans we had from China, the stock of the bilateral credits which is where China belongs, that we have, is small relative to the total stock.
So loans from China are about N3.2 trillion which was about 11 per cent of our total external debt.
To add, those are all concessional loans and there are no reasons to be worried about them, they’re all project tied which I think Nigeria should be happy about. We can see the physical infrastructure whether it’s the airport, whether it’s the rail lines, whether it’s the roads.
So we don’t see any reasons for concerns, they’re all project tied and they’re all concessional really. There was a lot of debate, but we did get proper interpretations both from China and the Ministry of Justice. We also as the DMO had China loans on our website way back june 2020.
They’re all concessional loans that are project tied and we are not concerned about them,” she said.
