Gov Soludo Squashes Reports of N245bn Loan To Fund Anambra Budget

The Governor of Anambra State, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, has declared that his government has no intentions of securing any loan to fund the state budget.

The Governor made this known on Tuesday during the 33rd anniversary of the state’s creation held at the Governor’s Lodge in Amawbia area of the state.

The Governor was quick to dispel any talks of the government borrowing money for that purpose.

According to Soludo, the government was already running a deficit of N121 billion for the 2024 appropriation, which makes such borrowing claims unrealistic.

He explained that borrowing can only be envisaged if the state is faced with funding projects that assure a high probability of accruing returns to repay any such debt.

“The report about Anambra planning to borrow N245 billion to fund the 2024 budget is not true, and I don’t know where they got that story from.

“Let’s make it clear that I have a specific view about borrowing. Every enterprise, whether private or public, that wants to scale up its activities must consider the funds, the options, the opportunities, the cost of those funds, and the time value for money.

“It might make sense to borrow today to provide goods and services, with the expectation that tomorrow the economy will generate resources to pay back.

“Let’s be clear, this administration under my watch has a particular view on borrowing, and we have very stringent criteria for it.

“In 2022, the State House of Assembly approved borrowing N100 billion for a supplementary budget, but to this moment, we have not borrowed a kobo of that amount.”

“Last year, 2023, we had an implicit budget deficit of about N90 billion, but we did not borrow a kobo for that, and this year we have a deficit of about N121 billion, and we have not borrowed a kobo for that either.”

“The reason is simple: we are working on projects and programmes that will be bankable. We insist on borrowing only for bankable projects that have a high probability of generating returns to repay the debt,” Soludo said.

In a separate reaction to the news of states receiving N438 billion from the World Bank, the Governor noted that Anambra state was not part of the borrowing states.