As a way of running away from the barrage of criticisms trailing the revelation by the Federal Government that it will in the next three years, borrow $29.96bn from three major international lenders, the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun yesterday, gave details of plans for the loan in Abuja.
The loan is expected to come from World Bank, African Development Bank, and Japan International Co-operation Agency.
A statement issued by her Special Adviser, Mr. Festus Akanbi listed other international financial agencies it plans to borrow the money from to include Islamic Development Bank and China EximBank.
It would be recalled that on Tuesday this week, President Muhammadu Buhari had forwarded a request to the National Assembly to approve external borrowing plan of $29.96bn to execute key infrastructure across the country between 2016 and 2018.
Buhari said the borrowings will target projects across all sectors with special emphasis on infrastructure, agriculture, health, education, water supply, growth and employment generation.
Other sectors, he said, included poverty reduction through social safety net programmes, governance and financial management reforms, among others.
According to the statement, out of the total amount, Federal Government will take $25.8bn and states$ 4.1bn.
A further breakdown shows that $18.3bn will be spent on infrastructure development, with $14.6bn going to federal projects and $3.7bn going to state projects.
The projects billed to benefit from the loans are the Mambila Hydro Electric Power Project, which will get $4.8bn and the Abuja Mass Rail Transit project, phase two getting 1.6 billion dollars.
Also, $3.5bn is slated for the completion of the Railway Modernisation Coastal Project from Calabar to Port Harcourt-Onne Deep Sea Port segment.
About $2.4bn will go to the Lagos-Kano Railway Modernisation project; $1.3bn is specifically for the Lagos-Ibadan segment and $1.1bn will go to the Kano-Kaduna segment.
Also, $4.5bn will go to acquire Euro bonds; $3.5bn will be dedicated to the Federal Government budget support.
The reports say $2.2bn will be sunk in education and health projects at state and federal levels.
Similarly, $1.2bn is set aside for agriculture projects at both levels and $200m is for economic management and statistics.
Before now, the leadership of Peoples Democratic party (PDP) had distanced itself from the planned borrowing, saying the government should look inwards and solve its recession crisis.
