The Federal Government is working on issuing eurobonds and plans to pick advisers through an open bid process, the Director General of the Debt Management Office (DMO), Patience Oniha, was reported by Reuters as saying yesterday. According to the news agency, she said the amount to be raised would be within the foreign borrowing plans for 2021.
The FG budgeted to raise N2.34 trillion from foreign sources. Nigeria had planned a eurobond issue early last year after its sixth sale in 2018 where it raised $2.86 billion. But it decided to defer the 2020 sale due to the turmoil caused by the COVID-19.
In February, it trimmed offshore borrowings in a new debt strategy after it repaid a $500 million eurobond in January. Oniha had said the DMO was monitoring international markets for new issues by frontier countries. Last week, Nigeria’s West African neighbour, Ghana, raised $3 billion via eurobonds, a year after COVID shut developing countries out. The Institute of International Finance had said it expected African governments to return to capital markets this year to sell bonds as investors embrace more risk.
