President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday says borrowing helped Nigeria exit recessions.

He disclosed this while presenting the 2022 budget before the joint session of the National Assembly.

The President presented N16.39 trillion as the 2022 budget proposal.

Buhari stated that Nigeria would have still been in recession if not for borrowing by his government.

“As you are aware, we have witnessed two economic recessions within the period of this administration. In both cases, we had to spend our way out of recession, which necessitated a resort to growing the public debt. It is unlikely that our recovery from each of the two recessions would have grown as fast without the sustained government expenditure funded by debt,” he said.

According to the president, Nigeria is not having a debt problem, rather, a revenue problem.

To finance the deficit, Nigeria will borrow “N5.01 trillion, N90.73 billion from privatization proceeds and N1.16 trillion drawdowns on loans secured for specific development projects.”