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Board members of the Paris Club of creditor nations will meet later this month to finalize modalities for debt relief to Nigeria, the official News Agency of Nigeria reported Monday.
Board members of the Paris Club of creditor nations will meet later this month to finalize modalities for debt relief to Nigeria, the official News Agency of Nigeria reported Monday.
Sadiq Sanusi, chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Loans, Aids and Debts Management, was quoted as saying that experts from those countries would converge to review Nigeria's case on Sept. 29.
"The meeting will focus on an agreement based on which Nigeria will come out of the debt burden, and if it is finalized, it is a matter of making a memo to their political leaders on the deal," he said.
He also said that under the debt cancellation deal the country would pay 6 billion dollars before the end of the year and deposit an equal amount before June 2006.
"With 24 billion dollars in our foreign reserve, expected increase in oil revenue and the commitment of President Olusegun Obasanjo, the deal will save our neck," he said.
According to Sanusi, Nigeria's foreign debt stood at 36 billion as at December 2004, the largest in Africa, while local creditors were also owed 1.6 trillion naira (about 12 billion dollars) in short-term loans.
Nigeria announced on June 29 that the creditor nations had resolved to cancel 18 billion dollars of the nation's debt overhang based on some technicalities to be worked out.
As Africa's top oil producer, Nigeria earns billions of dollars annually from oil but three-quarters of its 130-million-strong population still live in abject poverty on less than one dollar per day.
Source: Xinhua