CBN, DMO exceed debt offerings by N70 billion

World Bank confident Nigeria will exit recession soon
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) yesterday raised additional N40 billion through the Treasury Bills offering for government to execute its 2017 budget deficit plan.

The Debt Management Office also issued more bonds yesterday than it actually planned at an auction, after slowing inflation rate helped it offer debt at lower yields.

The debt manager raised N160 billion at an auction on Wednesday, against planned N130 billion, about N30 billion increase.

CBN had planned a treasury bills auction of about N213 billion, but market sources told The Guardian that greater investor-interest was lured as the yields for the offer rose above inflation level.

Consequently, it sold N253.8 billion debt in 12-month paper, at 18.55 per cent, against a yield of 18.49 per cent at its last auction and higher than February’s inflation rate of 17.78 per cent.

The apex bank has been selling bills with yields below inflation in recent months to curb borrowing costs as it aims to fund half of this year’s forecast budget deficit of N2.36 trillion ($7.50 billion) through the domestic debt market.

The CBN again intervened at the interbank foreign exchange market yesterday, injecting $100 million through forwards auction, with 60 days maturity.

Meanwhile, the International Finance Corporation, IFC, a member of the World Bank group, yesterday said Nigeria would soon recover from economic recession.

IFC Country Manager, Mrs. Eme Essien-Lore made the observation in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos on Thursday.

“In our perspective and with the numbers that we have seen coming from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Nigeria’s economy has recorded about one per cent real growth.

“That is a bit lower than government’s expectation which is about 2.2 per cent growth for 2017. It is a bit modest, but we certainly expect that the economy of Nigeria will rebound and recover from last year’s recession, ” she said.

Essien-Lore commended Federal Government`s new economic plan, but said that there was need to set priorities for implementation of the plan by the year 2020.