Isaac Anumihe, Abuja
National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) yesterday, said that States and Federal debt stock data as at December 31, 2018 reflected that the country’s foreign and domestic debts stood at $25.27 billion and N16.63 trillion respectively.
A statement obtained from the bureau’s website further said that disaggregation of Nigeria’s foreign debt showed that $11.01 billion of the debt was multilateral; $344.63 million was bilateral (AFD) and another $2.75 billion bilateral from the Exim Bank of China, JICA, India and KFW while $11.17 billion was commercial which are basically Eurobonds and Diaspora Bonds.
Lagos State has the highest foreign debt profile among the thirty-six states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) accounting for 5.64 per cent Edo (1.09 per cent), Kaduna (.0.90 per cent) and Cross River (0.75 per cent) followed closely. Similarly, total domestic debt was N16.63 trillion with Lagos state accounting for 3.19 per cent of the total domestic debt stock while Yobe State has the least debt stock in this category with a contribution of 0.17 per cent to the total domestic debt stock.
Similarly, NBS said that the Pension Asset and Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) Membership Data Q4 2018 reflected that 8,410,184 workers are registered under the pension scheme compared to 8,136,202 registered workers in Q2 2018 while the Pension Fund Asset under Management as at Q4 2018 stood at N8,637million as against N8,323million in Q2 2018.
FGN Bonds have the highest weight percentage of 52.49 per cent of the total pension fund assets and closely followed by treasury bills with 19.37 per cent weight and local money market securities with 8.21 per cent weight while foreign money market securities has the least with 0.04 per cent weight.
Contributors within the age distribution of 30-39 years have the highest percentage composition closely followed by contributors within the age bracket of 40-49 years and 50-59 years while contributors above 65 years has the least percentage composition.