States To Draw From N300bn Presidential Bailout Soon – Presidency
Mr. Laolu Akande, the media assistant to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo noted in a statement yesterday that specifically, state governments would start benefiting from the special intervention fund of between N250 billion to N300 billion in a matter of weeks. He said, “Currently, planning meetings are being held between members of the Federation Account Allocation Committee, FAAC and CBN, on the one hand, and also between CBN and commercial banks on the other hand, regarding details of the special intervention fund and the debt relief programme of the President for the states.
“Such meetings are reviewing loan profiles of the states, issues around restructuring of existing loans including time span, and reconciling the figures.
“Already, it has been agreed that existing state loans be restructured for 20 years, and regarding the bond option, the rates to be applied would be market-based but with a cap to make it affordable. Within weeks from now, the states are expected to start benefiting from this two other parts of the presidential intervention”.
Recalling that the details of the presidential intervention are in three parts, he listed one of them as the sharing of about $2.1billion in fresh allocation between the states and the federal government which was “sourced from recent LNG proceeds to the federation account, and its release okayed by the president.”
He said the second one is a Central Bank-packaged special intervention fund to the tune of about N250billion to N300billion that will offer financing to the states, adding that this would be a soft loan available to states.
He listed the last one as a “debt relief programme by the Central Bank of Nigeria and Debt Management Office, DMO, which will help states convert their commercial bank loans into bonds, and restructuring such loans by extending their life span thereby reducing the debt-servicing expenditures of the states.
“By extending the commercial loans of the states, the third part of the presidential intervention would therefore make available more funds to the state governments.
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