Although some states are still at various stages of processing the soft loan, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo who presided over the National Economic Council meeting which held at the State House, Abuja, disclosed that, 13 new states are also now being considered in addition with 12 banks for the second phase of the debt restructuring offered to the states by the Debt Management Office (DMO).
Meanwhile, those involved in the second stage are in addition to the 11 states whose debts were restructured, Abraham Nwankwo, DG of DMO disclosed, thus implying that 23 states are now involved in the restructuring.
In all, over N574 billion debts have been restructured, including over N322 billion loans of the various states were restructured last month and about N252 billion, this month.
It would be recalled that the presidential relief package has three core elements to alleviate hardship occasioned by state governments’ financial recklessness.
While the Presidential relief package subsists, another, is the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) – packaged intervention fund that offers financing to the states to the tune of N300 billion.
Like the Presidential relief fund, the CBN package also aims at helping states pay their backlog of salaries.
As it stands, the states will be sharing about $2.1 billion in fresh allocation with the Federal Government.
The money was sourced from recent Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) proceeds which hit federal account, and its release, okayed by the president, a move which led to the sharing of federal allocation twice in the month of June.
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