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| Kwara State Governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed |
The Kwara Government on Tuesday said the state’s debt currently stands at N30.2bn with a monthly repayment of N496m.
The Commissioner for Finance, Demola Banu, told newsmen in Ilorin that this was contrary to some speculations.
According to him, the debt was N31.4bn in 2017 and N30.7bn at the end of 2018, contrary to social media speculation of N50.2bn.
Giving a breakdown of the current indebtedness, Banu explained that the loan included N15.3bn balance of the Federal Government restructured loan, N4bn salary bailout, excess crude account loan outstanding of N9.3bn and vehicle loan balance of N128m.
Others are the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme and Anchor Borrowers Programme Agriculture Scheme with respective balances of N646m and N679m as well as International Aviation College loan balance of N96m.
Banu said that the repayment of N496m was being deducted from the state’s monthly federal allocation, adding that the figure included a monthly deduction of N39m as repayment for foreign loans obtained by the government in the 1970s.
Banu said that the Federal Government restructured the state government’s short and long-term bank loans to reduce monthly repayment, while the state also benefited from a five billion salary bailout loan in 2015.
The commissioner said that the excess crude account loans were Federal Government-backed bank facilities which served as seed money for the Kwara Infrastructure Development Fund (IF-K) and payment for ongoing projects in the state.
He said that the CACS and ABP were state-government guaranteed Central Bank of Nigeria loans to farmers in the state.
