DMO Reacts To THE WHISTLER Report On N110.31bn China Railway Debt

The Debt Management Office (DMO) has reacted to THE WHISTLER report on Nigeria’s alleged failure to service its China-owed railway debt.

The principal and the accumulated interest in two years has gone up to N110.31bn.

THE WHISTLER on Tuesday reported that data from the DMO indicated that the interest in two years which amounted to N41.31bn has not been paid. This newspaper was the only platform that calculated the two-year interest to be N41.31 billion.

Reacting to the report without mentioning the name of the newspaper, the DMO in a statement published on Wednesday claimed the report was false without providing evidence of the true status of the debt service.

The statement read, “The attention of the Debt Management Office (DMO) has been drawn to a publication by some media houses claiming that Nigeria has defaulted in debt repayment to China for which it claimed penalties stand at N41.31bn.

“The public is advised to ignore the publication as it is FALSE.

“A closer look at the media publication shows that the body of the publication is completely detached from the headline which gives the impression that the publishers of the report may have set out to mislead the public.

“The public is assured that Nigeria is fully committed to honouring its debt obligations and has not defaulted on any of its debt service obligations. The media report should therefore be disregarded.”

THE WHISTLER got its data from the DMO publication themed “Actual External Debt Service Payment January – December 2021 and 2022” respectively.