By Chioma Iruke
Nigeria’s Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed on Monday said the country would on October 11 this year, launch its planned Eurobond issue.
The minister also said the country would hold roadshows for the dollar-denominated issuance, which aims to raise roughly $3 billion, in Lagos and New York.
The government is also targeting raising the same amount via multilateral and bilateral borrowing to fund its 2021 budget deficit.
“We have an approval in the 2021 budget to fund the budget deficit 50% locally and 50% externally.
“We are planning to do about half of that in eurobonds and the other half through other windows such as multilateral and bilateral sources,” Ahmed said.
Nigeria which boasts to be Africa’s largest economy, is struggling to boost growth after exiting its second recession since 2016 in the fourth quarter of last year. Its incoming statistician-general has said the nation is targeting gross domestic product growth above 5% for 2021.
