Daily Watch – Foreign debt rises, Insurance industry grows

28th July 2015

  • Nigeria’s foreign debt for half-year 2015 has risen by 10%, standing at $10.32 billion from $9.38 billion in the same period of last year, the Debt Management Office (DMO) said on Monday. Offshore debt showed a 39.1 percent rise to N2.03 trillion, due to a weaker currency, which weakened by about 20% during the period. Domestic debt stood at N8.39 trillion as against N7.42 trillion last year.
  • The process of sharing $2.1 billion among the government federal, state and local governments to reduce a growing backlog of debts and restructure short-term loans, has started, a spokesman for the vice president has said. The sharing of revenues from the state-owned gas company, NLNG was announced earlier this month after governors of the 36 states requested federal government support from President Muhammadu Buhari.
  • The Nigerian insurance industry reached a capitalization of N337 billion in 2010 up from N98 billion in 2007. This was announced by the Commissioner of Insurance in Lagos, Fola Daniel. As at 2014, Gross Premium income stood at N303 billion, rising from N100 billion in 2007. A significant part of the growth was been attributed to taking advantage of opportunities provided by legislation.
  • In line with a CBN directive, AMCON on Monday asked loan defaulters to immediately settle their accounts or it would publish their names. The central bank had in April directed lenders to give bad debtors three months to square their accounts; otherwise they would be named in the media and barred from taking part in the currency and government debt markets. AMCON has said that if loans remained unpaid, it will take steps to recover the debts including by legal means. It says that debtors should not assume that it would forgive their indebtedness. AMCON has recovered 57 percent of its bad debts, estimated around N1.8 trillion from over 12,000 debtors of commercial banks in the country.