CBN maintains FG’s Ways and Means loan at 5%

• CBN’s Act stipulates that Ways and Means is required not to surpass 5 percent of the previous year’s revenue of the federal government
  

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The Central Bank of Nigeria said it will maintain its Ways and Means advances to the federal government at a 5 percent maximum benchmark for the 2024-2025 fiscal year.

The apex bank disclosed this in a document titled, ‘Monetary, credit, foreign trade, and exchange policy guidelines for the fiscal years 2024-2025’ released on its official Website on Tuesday.

CBN’s Act stipulates that Ways and Means is required not to surpass 5 percent of the previous year’s revenue of the federal government.

However, the previous administration had breached the law by surpassing the legible Ways and Means limit over the years.

Meanwhile, in the latest guidelines, CBN noted it would continue to finance the federal government through ways and means.

“Ways and Means Advances shall continue to be available to the Federal Government to finance deficits in its budgetary operations to a maximum of 5.0 percent of the previous year’s actual collected revenue,” the regulator said.

The CBN explained that such advances shall be liquidated “as soon as possible and shall, in any event, be repayable at the end of the year in which it was granted”.

“Consistent with the banking arrangement of Treasury Single Account (TSA), Ways and Means Advances would now be determined after recognizing the sub-accounts of the various MDAs, which are now linked to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) to arrive at the FGN consolidated cash position,” the apex bank said.

Recall that on February 9, 2024, Olayemi Cardoso, Governor of the CBN, said the financial institution would halt its ways and means advances to the federal government, “until all outstanding debts are refunded”.

His comment comes amid a renewed push by Nigeria’s national assembly to increase the ways and means limit to 10 percent.

To this end, in February, a bill seeking to raise ways and means to the federal government from 5 percent to 10 percent passed the second reading at the Senate.