News Investigators/ The Director-General of the Debt Management Office (DMO), Patience Oniha, says synergy between the DMO and state governments is crucial for effective national debt management.
Mrs Oniha said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sidelines of the World Bank assisted workshop on Borrowing Guidelines for top policy makers in Lagos on Tuesday.
She said that the DMO worked with the states to intimate their relevant officials with basic understanding of effective debt management.
“This workshop is part of the activities we undertake with the sub-national governments. It involves all of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
“We work with them on debt management. It is a programme which starts with the basic of understanding what debt is, putting together a debt figure.
“They need to know how much they are owing at any time.
“This one on borrowing guidelines is to support their request for borrowing by letting them understand all the various laws that govern borrowing,” she said.
The director-general said that before any government could borrow, there were provisions of the law that must be complied with.
“We need the sub-national governments to understand the processes, the documentation and the purposes.
“The Fiscal Responsibility Act, for instance, says you should borrow for capital projects and human development purposes.
“States should understand these eligible reasons. The law talks about borrowing being approved by the State Executive Council as well as the State Assembly, similar to what happens at the federal level,” Oniha said.
She said that the DMO had noticed gaps previously in the process of processing requests for borrowing from state governments.
She said that it was a bit tedious to process the requests because of limited understanding, adding that the workshop was designed to address such gaps.
NAN