The International Monetary Fund has revealed that Nigeria left approximately two per cent of its Gross Domestic Product in public spending unrecorded within recent official budgets, obscuring the true extent of the nation’s actual financing needs.
Speaking to business executives at an industry event in Lagos, the IMF Resident Representative in Nigeria, Christian Ebeke, explained that this massive statistical discrepancy effectively hides the true size of the country’s fiscal deficit relative to its aggressive debt accumulation.
He stated that because critical capital allocations were completely omitted from formal budget documents and subsequent implementation reports, the Federal Government’s reported deficit appeared significantly smaller than its actual level of borrowing.
“So far we think that there are about two per cent of GDP of expenditure that were not reported that should be reported and should be recorded, so that this statistical discrepancy will disappear,” Ebeke stated.
The IMF envoy, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday, noted that these massive unrecorded outlays are directly linked to large-scale government infrastructure projects executed off-budget entirely.
