By Francis Ogwo
Nigeria could save about $432.6m from May 2020 to December 2021 through the debt service suspension initiative, the World Bank has disclosed
This was made public in a brief on COVID-19: Debt Service Suspension Initiative, updated by the bank on its website.
Under the DSSI, official creditors commit to suspend payments on all principal and interest coming in within a stipulated period of time.
The World Bank, in its brief, provided an estimate of what different countries, including Nigeria, could save if creditors suspended payments on all principal and interests within a period of 20 months.
However, Nigeria is not a beneficiary of this initiative, which could add 0.1 per cent to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product, according to the brief.
Despite being one of the largest World Bank borrowers, Nigeria is not covered by the Joint Bank-Fund Debt Sustainability Framework for Low-Income Countries.
In a separate document published in April this year by the World Bank – the Debt Report 2021 Edition II – the bank provided a justification for countries that were not yet beneficiaries of the DSSI.
According to the report said that although some countries were eligible for the DSSI, they had chosen not to participate for a number of reasons.
