Anambra: Why I Haven’t Borrowed In 3yrs-Soludo

Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra State has denied report that the state is planning to borrow N245 billion to finance the 2024 Budget.

The governor said the report is false, and should be disregarded.

The state’s helmsman made the remark while answering questions from journalist after his statewide broadcast to mark the state 33 years of statehood.

Recall that the state house of Assembly had in 2022 approved N100 billion for the state government to borrow. But Governor Soludo said the fund has not been borrowed because there is no need for it yet.

According to the former Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, governor borrowing is not a wrong thing to do by a government, but the state has not borrowed since he came to office three years ago because the need has not arose yet.

He explained further that despite the N121 billion deficit in the 2024 Budget the state has not borrowed to fill the gap, adding that “we have been working on projects, on programmes that will be bankable.”

Soludo said, “The news that I want to borrow N245 billion to fund the 2024 budget is fake news. I have tried to find out from the rest of my team where that was coming from and to know if there is any such plans that I’m not aware of. So, it is certainly fake news.

“Let’s be clear, and I want to make some points about borrowing. I have a view about borrowing. Every enterprise, be it private, government or whatever that wants to scale up their activities will look at the cost of funds, the opportunity and the time value of those money and it can make sense.

“You can borrow today to provide goods and services and tomorrow the economy will generate enough resources to pay back. So, borrowing in itself is not a bad idea. Every prosperous country that ever developed and grown big lived on some form of debt or another.

“So borrowing is not a negative word, but this administration under my watch, we have a particular view about borrowing and we have very narrow stringent criteria for borrowing. We are not just going to borrow just to finance this or finance that.

“In 2022, the House of Assembly, when we had our supplementary budget, actually approved for us to borrow N100 billion. To this moment, we haven’t borrowed a kobo out of that. Last year 2023, we had deficit in our budget, about ninety something billion.

“This year, we have a budget deficit of about N121 billion and until this moment we have not borrowed one kobo of that. The reason is that we have been working on projects, on programmes that will be bankable. We are insisting that we borrow for bankable projects, for projects that will create and add value.

“So far we are working on some major infrastructural projects that will generate resource payback. The moment we are ready for that, that is when we will gladly and proudly approach the market to be able to scale up our transformational trajectory,” the governor said.