DMO Director-General Abraham Nwankwo made the announcement at the opening of a workshop to unveil the strategy in Abuja yesterday.
He said the strategy was to assist President Umar Musa Yar’adua in achieving his quest to make Nigeria one of the top 20 economies by 2020.
The workshop’s theme is “the World Bank/IMF Debt Sustainability Framework for Low Income Countries’’.
Nwankwo said the focus would be on foreign debts, to ensure that new external borrowings were properly managed within an appropriate debt management framework.
“It will focus on mobilising additional financing such as grants and concessional loans targeted at accelerating growth and poverty reduction and meeting other MDGs related targets,’’ he said.
He said it would aim at accessing and mobilising resources on concessional terms to minimise the cost of foreign currency funding.
The strategy, he said, was geared toward accessing the international capital market on terms favourable to Nigeria.
On the management of domestic debt, Nwankwo said the new focus would concentrate on “integrating cash management with debt management operators’’.
“It will focus on deepening the domestic market through the use of derivative instruments as well as the introduction of foreign currency denominated FGN bonds in the domestic market,’’ he stated.
The strategy would focus on widening and deepening the scope of the financial and capital markets in line with Financial System Strategy (FSS 2020) which would improve the efficiency of debt management.
He said domestic debt management strategy was also aimed at developing an appropriate mechanism for prudent, sustainable and justifiable on-lending to sub-national entities.
According to him, the strategy will use the DMO platform to develop Debt Management Units in the 36 states and FCTA.
In his remark, the permanent secretary, federal ministry of finance, Mr. Akin Arikawe, urged participants to come up with a well-defined long term country borrowing strategy.
He advised them to look for a realistic policy on new financing needed to achieve poverty reduction and wealth creation.
Arikawe also urged the participants to produce a National Debt Sustainability Report that would help guide Nigeria’s future external, domestic and sub-national debt strategies.