Reps approve $5.8bn loan requested by Buhari

The house of representatives has approved a $5,803,364,553.50 loan requested by President Muhammadu Buhari. 

The lower legislative chamber also approved grant components of $10 million.

In May, Buhari wrote the national assembly requesting loans as part of the 2018–2020 external borrowing (rolling) plan.

The loans have been approved in batches. In July, the national assembly approved the sums of $8.3 billion and €490 million loans as initial requests in the 2018-2020 borrowing plan.

On Tuesday, the loan request was approved after Ahmed Safana, chairman of the committee on local and foreign debts, presented a report during the plenary session.

According to the breakdown of the loan, $2.3 million financed by German Consortium will be used for grid modernisation and expansion programme under the Presidential Power Initiative (PPI).

For the health sector, the Islamic Development Bank and World Bank will provide N200 million and N90 million, respectively, to fund malaria-related projects.

The China Eximbank will finance the Gurara phase one project worth $786.38 million and the World Bank will disburse $700 million to fund the Nigeria Sustainable Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Project.

Projects including solar cell production facility phases I and II, electric power transformer production plant I, II and III and high voltage testing laboratory — all in the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) — are also expected to be financed by the Chinese African Development fund through the Bank of China with $276.9 million.

For the ministry of agriculture, the World Bank will finance four agro projects — the agro processing productivity enhancement and livelihood improvement support, agro climatic resilience in arid zone landscape, livestock productivity and resilience support project and value chain development programme — with the total cost of $1.450 billion.

The green chamber said “the terms and conditions of the loan from the funding agencies be forwarded to the national
assembly before the execution of same for approval and proper documentation”.