The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi has repeated that Nigeria is not in any position of losing its sovereign processions as a result of loans taken from China.
The Minister who was a guest on Channels Television Tuesday evening said despites concerns that are being raised, Nigeria would live up to its debt obligations.
He said Nigeria has repaid about $98 miillion dollars since taking the first set of Chinese loans.
Saying it was criminal to contemplate the idea of loan non repayment, the Minister said Nigerians should be more interested in the advantages which could accrue from investments that are being made on the nation’s evolving rail system.
He disclosed that prior to the Covid 19 era, the rail system was already transporting about 4000 passengers between Kaduna and Abuja on a daily basis.
According to him, the use of rail lines would cause a reduction in the number of days spent on the road by haulage trucks as well as the man hours lost in moving goods between two points.
Citing the haulage of goods between Lagos and Abuja, Amaechi noted it would take eight hours for fast trains traveling from Lagos to the Federal capital instead of 14 days spent by road.
Amaechi said apart from enhancing the longevity of roads built at huge cost, Nigeria would reap from the transportation of volumes of goods and services by rail in the long run.
He dismissed fears that the incsertion of sovereign guarantee clauses in the terms of the loan agreement with China would pose any problem, saying the injection of such clauses were part of a standard procedure for protecting lenders and their money.
Amaechi assured that those terms which included Hongkong as a third party nation would not jeopardize the country’s future.
He expressed optimism that matters concerning the loans from China may never get to arbitration, given the country’s track record for meeting its debt obligations.
The Minister however noted that there was no way the nation could have procured foreign loans without the concurrence of the National Assembly, stressing that those matters were brought before Federal lawmakers in the early stages.
He reiterated that interest rates on borrowed funds from China were the cheapest anywhere in the world.
Nigeria is paying an interest of 2.8% annually on the said funds.
