Eyes Of Lagos gathered that, The Debt Management Office (DMO) yesterday spurned report suggesting that the office does not have a debt management strategy despite the nation’s debt stock. In a rebuttal, the DMO said the report by a national daily in which the reporter claimed he got the confirmation from the Director-General of the DMO, Patience Oniha, who purportedly said they are working on it, is not only false but a manipulation of information to malign the agency. The DMO had revealed that the country’s debt increased from N21.73 trillion in December 2017 to N22.71 trillion at the end of the first quarter of 2018. The debt office also said it has a Debt Management Strategy that was approved by the Federal Executive Council in June 2016 which runs up and until December 2019. “The document is available on https://www.dmo.gov.ng/publications/other-publications/debt-management-strategy, head of media at the DMO”, Chinenye Onu said in a statement yesterday. “The publication is absolutely false and the claim by the writer of the story that he obtained a confirmation from the Director-General of the Debt Management Office to the effect that the DMO was “working on it” is also very wrong. The enquiry from Obinna Chima was on the DMO’s Strategic Plan (an institutional plan) and not the Public Debt Management Strategy. This action amounts to deception and manipulation of information,” the statement said. Refuting the said report, Onu said, “In the event that the writer of the misleading report is not conversant with the difference between the Debt Management Strategy and the DMO’s Strategic Plan, he should note that the Strategic Plan is a statement of the institution’s Goals and Objectives as well as, the activities that will enable their achievements. “It covers issues such as Human Resources, Technology, and Market Development amongst others. This contrasts very sharply with the Public Debt Management Strategy, which is entirely about the strategies for managing the public debt to ensure that borrowing is prudent and the public debt is sustainable. “The public is advised to disregard the publication and be assured that Nigeria has a duly approved subsisting Debt Strategy which runs till December 2019. Furthermore, the public should be assured that the Strategy is being implemented in full”. She further noted that preparations on how to produce a new Strategic Plan that will deliver a new, robust and all encompassing strategy for DMO is at the final stage. Onu said a robust Strategic Plan became necessary due to developments in the macro-economy, the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan and the need to come up with creative ways to fund the Government in the face of lower Revenues. “A new Strategic Plan for the DMO had to be prepared in a holistic manner to incorporate these developments and expectations. The old pattern of preparing the Strategic Plan would have been grossly inadequate,” she noted.
